Dell studio 17 taskbar/mouse freezes

[Andeh13]

I have had a studio 17 laptop for a few years now, throughout this time I have had a problem with the start menu/mouse freezing.

75% of the time i go to click on the task bar (start menu, open tabs etc) it will stop responding, and either take 5-6 seconds to sort itself or I get the 'Windows.. has stopped responding, restart, wait for program to respond etc). I have tried a reformat, update vis Windows Update and yet nothing seems to stop it. It happens more often when I am on battery power if that helps?


The second, and I imagine this is related is the fact that if I leave my mouse for a few mins (reading web pages etc) and come back it, it takes several seconds for it to detect movement on the trackpad, I dont have this problem when using an external mouse...just the track pad. During this time I can't seem to get any reaction from the keyboard as well. Again, formats & windows updates over the years haven't cured this.

Can anyone offer any advice?
thanks guys

edit: When i use the side of the trackpad to scroll up & down, sometimes the mouse gets stuck on the scrolling icon as well. The mouse still works, but the icons takes several seconds+ to swop back to the standard mouse icon. I am using Windows 7 32bit, fully updated.

[Andeh13]

For the record, since then I have formatted and put on 64bit of windows. I still have the problem, I replaced the keyboard for a backlit one and it seemingly sorted the freezing issue for a few days - a week...only to come back again same as before! I know this was the case because I was going to post back on here with this slightly unusual fix to my problem!


The symptoms are all the same, 80% of the time clicking on the taskbar/any of the windows or buttons on it will cause it to stop responding & will require a 'close the program not responding' etc.

Still open to suggestions, thanks

[Behemoth]

Is it by any chance related to over heating ? I've experienced this before on a Dell Inspiron 15 system which turned out to be a faulty component inside directly linked to the input controller.

[Andeh13]

Never considered over heating, but its been doing it this evening & whilst warm the laptop is definitely not hot!

[DDY]

It's possible the freezing is caused by DPC spikes, use the DPC Latency Checker to find out.

[Andeh13]

It's possible the freezing is caused by DPC spikes, use the DPC Latency Checker to find out.

Thanks mate, I think your on to something. Downloaded & ran it and something is causing some big red spikes every few seconds. I guess I have the pleasure of manually trying to track down which driver is causing the grief!