Is your Dell laptop frozen? Does it work, then freeze suddenly? This will go over several common occurrences when it comes to your Dell laptop freezing. The problem can be caused by either software or hardware causes, so read on to determine the right solution for you!
First Steps
This may seem trivial but a restart of your computer is the first thing you should try. This tends to fix some innocuous issues.
- Press and hold the power button for 15 seconds to force restart it.
Check for updates. Newer versions of Windows — like Windows 10 and 11 — do a good job of updating drivers and firmware. It’s worth checking if there are any updates to the drivers, USB firmware, etc.
- Right-click on the Start Menu and go to Settings > Windows Update on the left > Check for updates.
Software Issues
Video Drivers
The freezing could be an error with the video drivers, preventing your screen from displaying properly.
- Restart the video driver using this keyboard shortcut: Windows Key + Ctrl (Control) + Shift + B. This works in Windows 7 and up.
The graphics card drivers may need to be updated or reinstalled.
- Search online for your exact model of Dell laptop to find out what graphics card it has (sometimes referred to as a graphics processing unit or GPU).
Corrupt OS
A corrupt OS means that there are files critical to the operating system that has become invalid or messed up in some way (the computer was powered off during an update, the computer died while sleeping, etc). This leads to weird glitches throughout the computer. Windows provides access to repair tools that correct these corruption issues.
- Right-click on the Start Menu and select Command Prompt, Powershell, or Windows Terminal (Windows 8, 10, and 11 will provide different options).
- Type sfc /scannow and hit Enter.
- Wait for the command to finish. If there were corrupt files to repair, it will repair them.
Malware Infection
Check for viruses. Some forms of malware affect the ability to use the computer.
- Scan your computer with Malwarebytes or ESET Online Scan. These are free programs that provide some good malware scanning techniques.
Reinstall Windows. A full Windows reinstall may be necessary to restore the laptop’s normal function as malware infections aren’t always fully cleaned out post-quarantine.
- Use a known good and “clean” computer to download the Windows operating system to create a bootable flash drive.
- Back up any files, bookmarks, pictures, etc you wish to keep onto a cloud platform like Google Drive or Dropbox after you have run antivirus scans. This can lessen the transfer of existing malware onto your fresh install of Windows compared to plugging in a flash drive and infecting multiple computers.
- Boot from the Windows bootable flash drive. Erase all partitions in the setup wizard and install the fresh OS to your drive.
- Transfer the data back onto your laptop.
Hardware Issues
Faulty Device or Dock Driver
Sometimes when using a webcam or other device that is not using the proper driver will freeze the computer. If you are using a dock, does the laptop freeze when not docked?
Use Device Manager to check for driver updates.
- Open Device Manager by right-clicking on the Start Menu and selecting Device Manager.
- From there, find the webcam or device and uninstall the driver.
- Download and install the recommended driver from the vendor’s website.
Full Capacitors
Capacitors are tiny electrical power storage devices. The act of draining power out of them alleviates prolonged issues. A hard reset is necessary to fully drain the capacitors.
- To do this, remove all peripherals, laptop charger, and laptop battery. If your laptop battery is not easily removable, search our site for your exact Dell laptop model.
- Once everything is removed, hold the power button down for 60 seconds. This makes the computer attempt to power on and drain the capacitors and as a result, the built-up static charge.
- Sometimes, you will need to unplug the BIOS battery (CMOS battery) and drain all the laptop's power.
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