Freezing problem with Vostro 1500

I bought a Dell Vostro 1500 last June and it's worked fine for the most part. However, just last week I began to run into some problems. It will start to freeze at random intervals from the tiniest thing, usually just going to another web page. It'll stay frozen for about 10 seconds, then go back to normal again. It seems to happen more often after I first turn it on, as it rarely freezes when I've had it on for hours on end.

When it does freeze, the hard drive doesn't seem to even 'click' as it usually does when thinking, which leads me to believe that it may be related. However, I don't seem to have any other problems aside from this, so I don't think it's hard drive failure.

Has anybody else experienced a problem like this?

 

If you can find the make and model for your hard drive, try looking for the manufacturer's diagnostics utility(ies) and see if those turn up any problems. You can try using the HDTune scanner to check for bad sectors as well. Chances are if your drive passes all of those tests, the freezing is caused by something else.

 

Check the eventlog for disk errors as well. Back up in the mean time!