So what *does* make a PC go catatonic?
Feb. 19th, 2007 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurHere's a semi-idle question for those with more hardware-fu than myself:
My laptop has a problem, which it's had for quite some time. (I really should have exchanged the bloody thing when it was still new enough for that to be an option; now, I just live with it.) Once in a while, for no particularly apparent reason, it simply locks up -- hard. There's no BSOD, nor the runaway fan that would indicate an out-of-control process: it just stops responding to anything. I don't think it's a software problem, because the mouse goes completely non-responsive as well, and it's pretty hard to crash Windows badly enough to kill the mouse. (Almost everything else in Windows is fairly easy to destroy, but the mouse operates way down deep in the kernel.)
Anyone have any ideas what would cause such behaviour? The screen stays active where it last was, but I can't *do* anything -- even the three-finger salute has no effect, so I have to hard-boot when this happens. I'm mildly resigned to living with it until I decide to get my next laptop (which, yes, might actually be a Mac: my PC-centrism is weakening in this new Net-centric world), but any suggestions would be welcome. It's a real PITA when I'm in the middle of editing something and it does this...
My laptop has a problem, which it's had for quite some time. (I really should have exchanged the bloody thing when it was still new enough for that to be an option; now, I just live with it.) Once in a while, for no particularly apparent reason, it simply locks up -- hard. There's no BSOD, nor the runaway fan that would indicate an out-of-control process: it just stops responding to anything. I don't think it's a software problem, because the mouse goes completely non-responsive as well, and it's pretty hard to crash Windows badly enough to kill the mouse. (Almost everything else in Windows is fairly easy to destroy, but the mouse operates way down deep in the kernel.)
Anyone have any ideas what would cause such behaviour? The screen stays active where it last was, but I can't *do* anything -- even the three-finger salute has no effect, so I have to hard-boot when this happens. I'm mildly resigned to living with it until I decide to get my next laptop (which, yes, might actually be a Mac: my PC-centrism is weakening in this new Net-centric world), but any suggestions would be welcome. It's a real PITA when I'm in the middle of editing something and it does this...