Weird Crashing Problem

[Fusion]

So I've had my laptop now for 10 months, and every so often I'll get this weird problem. Suddenly everything will stop working, any current sound playing will repeat until I turn it off (Type "ebrbrbrbrbrbr" into a text-to-speech program for noise), and there's no error report. This has happened three times so far, once in January when I was watching the Futurama movies on WMP (understandable, probably shouldn't have stressed it that much), once last Friday when I was watching a stream for 3 hours (again, understandable, my laptop was getting hot and I didn't notice), but just now it froze when I had 3 tabs open, one of them Youtube, and I opened up WMP to see if I still had one of my old recorded videos. My laptop wasn't even hot, so it couldn't have been an overheat.

By my past experiences, this seems like a BSoD, but there isn't a blue screen. The only way it even recognizes that it's crashed is by the "Start Windows Normally" screen when I turn it back on. Even if it was showing the BSoD, I have no idea why it's been so crash-happy in one week.

Specs:
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2310M CPU@ 2.10 GHz
RAM: 6.00 GB

Browser: Firefox 12

The only thing I can think of is because I updated Firefox from 3.28 to 12 last week, and it might be something to do with the memory it takes up now.

So, does anyone know:

A) Why I'm not getting a BSoD anymore.
B) Where I can possibly find an error report to find out why this is happening.
C) Why this is happening.

[yuke5]

I have actually experienced that same noise issue with my laptop. It also gets hot regularly. Hmmm...

I can't offer much as far a solutions, but what this does mean is that you are not alone. Now that I realize that this isn't some sort of weird thing only with my laptop, I'll start looking into it as well. I'll let you know if I find anything useful. Now that I have started seriously considering the issue, the fan may have a bunch of dust clogging it or something, making it overheat, leading to an issue. I also remembering reading somewhere that once heat has done damage to a cpu, it may be irreversible.

Going on the internet now, searching for knowledge.

[Marth8880]

When is the last time you defragmented your hard drive? That's always something to make sure you're constantly doing monthly at the least. Also, have you tried scanning for malware, adware, etc.?

[lucasfart]

Surely fragmentation wouldn't be responsible for problems like that. All defragging does is make things load faster, doesn't it? Virus could be a possibility though...

EDIT: Here's something - http://eebahgum.blogspot.com.au/2008/01 ... trick.html. He links it to overheating. You did mention your computer overheated fairly often, so try cleaning out the dust..

EDIT2: Or try this: http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/in ... 432AAOsUkO

[Fusion]

It's not a virus, trust me. I am the most paranoid user on this site due to previous infections. Anyone who has ever tried to send me a "URL Shorteners are disallowed on Gametoast. Use direct links only." or "tinyurl" link can vouch for this.

It's probably the fan. It's a really bad design, the fan is at the back and the screen itself actually covers it if pointed at anything more than a 90 degree angle. It appears most of the heat is coming from the battery which is the furthest away from the fan itself. I guess until the A/C is put in I'll have to use my old USB "fanplate" for the beginning of the summer.

Although, today I'm pretty sure it was a fluke and it was WMP related. 50% of all my crashes over the years have happened while it's running. I noticed the "Disc Drive Running" cursor appear when I launched it so it was probably trying to add something to the library that didn't exist.

It's weird though, I never thought I'd be saying that I want a BSoD.

[Twilight_Warrior]

Advice I've heard while dealing with WMP:
Remove any and all Nero software you might have, it causes issues with certain Windows programs

There's also this:
Fix & Repair Windows Media Player with Fix WMP Utility
and
Troubleshooting Windows Media Player in Windows 7

[Marth8880]

Easy solution: use a good program, such as VLC.

[yuke5]

Hey, I don't know if this worked (or helped) for Fusion, but I suffer from a similar problem, and clearing the dust from my fan helped a whole bunch. It also improved its speed and its ability to run programs effectively.

[Fusion]

Already dusted it. It hasn't crashed since this thread.

[Ipodzanyman]

Go into your BIOS and see what your I/OH temperature is running at; I've seen people with similar problems with their chipset fans not spinning properly or even stuck.

Other than that I'd clean out the inside of the machine if that was the problem (hopefully that will fix the problem) and if not it could be a driver problem (I've also seen people with the stuttering audio/freezing/crashing issue with updating video drivers (you didn't list any dedicated GPU on your laptop so I'm unsure if that could have been a potential problem). Nvidia will include built in sound drivers for HDMI-out and sometimes it won't install correctly.

Good luck