Hiya

I have an Acer Aspire 5020 laptop and it was running fine until a month or so ago. Now the whole thing just freezes up every so often, but it seems to be only when it's plugged into the mains. I've tried reformatting it, and took it down to the local computer store where they promptly charged me £75 for doing absolutely nothing.

Could it be a faulty hardware issue? All power saving options (including turning hard drives off) are disabled, but the problem's still persisting.

All help is appreciated!

SD2k

Ouch! - so they're off of your Christmas card list...right?

Are you doing anything specific when the laptop freezes? How much RAM do you have? Have you checked your laptop for viruses and spyware lately?

The only thing I can think of that may cause that is a heat issue.

Normally when a laptop is running on battery it gets clocked down to save on battery (the options are normally in the bios) so when it's connected to mains it may be over heating a bit, do you notice any difference in temperatures when it's connected to mains?

Just throwin it out there cause I can't think of anything else that would cause it

It just did the same thing whilst running off battery but that was after having being turned on a while - after that it froze while doing an automatic checkdisk, then halfway through the Windows screen :P Looks like a heat issue then, will have a look at the fan and see what happens.

Assuming it can't be spyware/viruses if it does it in the middle of a checkdisk and while booting up?

Thanks a lot btw

That's quite possible but I doubt it, couldn't hurt to do the prework anyhow

As for looking at the fan, no need mate, have a look at speedfan which will give you your temps

That's what I get running on the battery, and it's about the same with the power plugged in. Is it a bad thing that there's no fans detected?