Laptop locking up

[Randy Cohen]

WHy would it be a battery? We just replace the batter a month or so ago and upgraded to the larger (9 cell) battery. What would thebattery do that would lock up the computer?
Interesting I would not have thougt of the battery.

i'm glad you found the real problem. the battery suggestion was because thats what happened to my son's puter.

[Brian Weick]

Ok you computer geeks... I need your shooting from the hip diagnosis.
Laptop computer we have had for a couple years is locking up. We reboot and somtime it makes it to reboot and somtime it locks up durting the windows opening sequence.
Somtimes the wireless card comes on (the little lite) and other times it does not.
Turn the wireless card of before reboot does not seem to change anything.
We reformatted and it is still doing it. SOme faults have come up "Bus 02 Device 03 Function 00
PCI Device somthing or other.
Is it a good estimation the wireless card is going bad?
Is this somthing that is integrated on the motherboard and would require the whole board replacement.
This is a toshiba that cost like $699 when new.
I am leaning towards a new laptop what do you all think? It has been used pretty constant for those two years. We have probably asked a lot of it all things considered.

Chris,
Wireless card going , I would have to say No based on the information you provided- either it is good or bad- nothing in the middle- electronic hardware will either work or it doesn't, ussually-with the exception of the hard drive ,this is totally different all 1's and 0's - you may have some corrupt drivers on the HD, or bad/corrupted sectors on the hard drive- you could have gotten one of those Trojan viruses that can cause havoc on your PC to the point the hard drive will not function correctly or won't boot up at all. I Just put a post up here about that with my buddy's computer- keeps looping into the F8 setup no matter what we do- I can't even access the drive from an A prompt. After he got the security software and we installed it ~ He had 149 infections and a few Trojans- I warned him about sticking his neck out on the WWW without a protection package installed , I feel bad for him,- now he's off getting a new hard drive and I have to reinstall everything for him. Have you run DSKCHECK - or scan disk from the accessories- it sounds as if you may have some corrupt files on your hard drive- run that - it will tell you if you have errors on the drive and may give you a message that you hard drive has suffered a serious error and you may want to back up all your files- it could be the hard drive on it's way out- they can be replaced for around $60.00 if you know how to do it. If your kids use it a lot- if they use e-mail frequently and open items that they receive that may be "shaky" at best- as soon as it is open- that starts the spread of the virus and you may not see it's impact write away, you may notice some strange behavior in the way it is functioning ~ until you try to correct the problem- that's when it may trigger a code in the virus to really cause severe damage and sometimes- it is not repairable.
Hope this helps Chris- it is frustrating these PC issues-and these hackers- well you know where they can go-
http://www.techsupportforum.com/micr...ows-loads.html
here's a link - some similar situations-
Brian

[John Shuk]

Was not looking for an evaluation of my consumerism or how I look at things. It has been used heavily and not treated as well as it would have if their were not kids involved. I understand your point but honestly I was looking for solutions not a judgement on how I buy things!

Chris I wasn't making a judgement at all. I remember giving away a puter I paid well in excess of $2k because I felt after a couple of years I felt it wasn't worth the effort to work on. A couple of weeks later my wife uh reminded me of that when I didn't want to spend money to replace a 12 year old mattress.
I just think it's funny how we accept things differently. It wasn't leveled at you or anyone else.

[Christopher Pine]

Chris I wasn't making a judgement at all. I remember giving away a puter I paid well in excess of $2k because I felt after a couple of years I felt it wasn't worth the effort to work on. A couple of weeks later my wife uh reminded me of that when I didn't want to spend money to replace a 12 year old mattress.
I just think it's funny how we accept things differently. It wasn't leveled at you or anyone else.

I apologize I was a little grumpy... I believe you were just making comment. Sorry

Chris