Angus Posted December 15, 2008 Share Posted December 15, 2008 I am running Win XP on a 2 year old Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop. Two days ago, I started having a problem which I have never before encountered: the screen randomly freezes about three times an hour. What's strange is that it's only the screen that freezes; the computer apparently happily carries on with what it's doing, but seemingly forgets to update the screen, almost as if it were taking a snapshot of that moment in time for me to contemplate. To free the screen from its trance, I simply have to hit the touchpad, and after a small glitchy flash, if that makes any sense, it returns to normality. When this occurs while watching Youtube, the screen and video freezes, while the audio continues on. When I move the cursor, the video catches up with the audio, perfectly in sync. During a virus scan the screen froze again, apparently stuck at 0:10:25, though the hard drive indicator showed that the HD was working. A touch of the touchpad, and it jumps to 0:21:05, as if nothing had happened. A virus scan and spyware scan revealed nothing. So far, this has only happened with windows; I haven't tried to duplicate it with any games in full screen mode. Any ideas as to what this might be? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergei Posted December 15, 2008 Share Posted December 15, 2008 Did you install any update, driver or program before symptoms started? You might want to restore settings from before that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Jack Ripper Posted December 15, 2008 Share Posted December 15, 2008 Maybe update your video driver? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergei Posted December 15, 2008 Share Posted December 15, 2008 I think it's unlikely that if everything was okay until this thing started all of a sudden, then updating a driver would change that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoex Posted December 15, 2008 Share Posted December 15, 2008 Since it's a laptop and this appears to be happening at regular intervals (particularly when watching vids), have you considered that your laptop is just conserving battery power by turning off screen refresh? Seems a little weird, I admit, but I knew someone whose laptop did something similar and that was due to a certain energy-saver setting....If its 2 years old the battery may be getting weaker, prompting some auto setting to trigger now which it didn't do before (or at least not so often) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jussi Köhler Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 Im guessing motherboard failure. I just had something slightly similar, something had fried on the board. Do you still have a guarantee on the thing? I did have problems in all applications though, not just windows. Go into the BIOS and let it sit for a while, do the problems still arise? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pak40 Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 Sounds like the power saver is trying to engage but instead of turning the screen of it only freezes. See if changing the power saving settings fixes or alters the problem. rclick on your desktop, click properties, then go to screen saver tab and click the power button to alter the settings. See if anything changes after you have made the changes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 Did you try unplugging the laptop, removing the battery for a few minutes and then reinserting the battery and restarting the laptop? That re-set things for mine a while back. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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