My Gaming Laptop

When your gaming laptop keeps freezing, it is a sure sign that a software or hardware fault has occurred. This article looks at the troubleshooting approach to resolving the issue starting with hardware checks.

Many slow laptop issues can relate to the CPU or hard drive getting overheated. Check the BIOS menu diagnostics to see if the CPU temperature levels are reaching automatic shutdown temperatures (detailed as well as the settings in the BIOS). If the laptop does appear to be overheating then make sure to keep all vents are unblocked, don’t leave the laptop near a radiator or other heat source and make sure the inlets on the underside of the laptop are not being blocked.

You can also check the hardware components via the Device Manager utility. It will detail if there are hardware conflicts or problems with device drivers and suggest ways of fixing these issues. It could be that your laptop keeps freezing because the driver has become out of date or developed faults.

It is also worth checking the Event Viewer log file (start, run, type in the eventvwr) to see what messages were thrown moments before your laptop froze. It should be possible to identify which software component or piece of hardware was causing the problem based on this error code (you can search online for the code to try and focus in what the component this).

Many slow laptop issues also relate to a lack of hard drive space. This impedes the virtual memory from expanding unhindered (as it uses free empty space on the disk). Microsoft recommend keeping at least 10% of the disk drive left empty for this purpose.

Lastly, run a virus check on your laptop hard-drive to make sure that there is no malware or adware in the system that could have damaged system files. You should also check the task manager utility to see which applications are running and try closing down any background tasks in order to allocate more RAM memory.