Toshiba Laptop keeps 'not responding'

[egon]

Hi there,

It was running fine but lately any program you run or open it gets frozen and the top bar shows it is 'not responding' or a window 'non responsive script' comes up.
I have adjusted the programs which launch upon starting up, I have run malware, spyware, scanned the whole thing and everything is fine.
I am at my wit's end - any help?
Thanks.

[DaveLembke]

Memtest 86 should be run on system as well as CrystalDiskInfo to check the hard drive health.


Bad Memory or a Troubled Hard Drive which also can act as temporary memory for virtual memory can cause problems like this.


Lastly if you have done all of this and still have problems, I'd suggest a full clean rebuild of the system from factory discs or restore partition to rebuild it fresh after first backing up all important data to an external drive if this is healthy enough to do this.

[egon]

I have been running memtest 86+ for almost 3 hours. It has done 4 passes and no error. How much longer shall I keep it running? Thanks

[DaveLembke]

Memtest86 showing no problems by now, I'd move on to a hard drive health check with crystaldiskinfo. If the drive shows up as Yellow ( warning ) or Red ( Failure ) status then it is the drive. Otherwise if the Hard Drive checks out fine, the best choice is to backup all data to a external drive and then perform a clean install. If after a clean install you still have a problem and the memtest and HDD passed then your likely dealing with a main board failure of some type.

Most problems like this are memory, hard drive, or just requiring a fresh clean build of the OS.

[egon]

I have run CrystalDiskInfo and got yellow caution. There are blue circles next to all items but one - Reallocated Sectors Count which has a yellow one.
Is there anything I can do? Thanks.

[DaveLembke]

I'd replace the hard drive as for it is heavily worn or damaged. If the problem you were having was only this ill hard drive, then the laptop will be cured of its problems hanging up on you.