This could be an issue, there's potentially a fried ram bar, since it's a laptop I wouldn't advise cracking it open to check unless you feel confident enough. As for just a general oversee of this I can see several possible issues that you're having 1. You're using Norton. Norton is a monster of its own creation, when it believes it's not getting enough attention it takes every possible resource it can. 2. You haven't had a good clean out and defrag of your laptop since purchase 3. Your hard drive could be on its last legs.
True, although unless it's corrupted ram allocation and reading i don't think it's #3 Most laptops have accessible ram, I'd advise borrowing some from a friend and testing the ram sticks AND the bays they slot in. It could also be a BIOS issue, you should check your BIOS ram settings
I haven't changed the ram configuration since I got the laptop. However I do know that there is 1 stick of 4gb ram in my motherboard, and there is a second slot empty. I don't use Norton either. I did a test in windows on the health of my ram and it came back with no problems. So the last thing left on the list is that my harddrive is failing. This could be true, but unlikely. Is there any tools I can download, that will check the health of my harddrive?
Since I started, I've ruled out a few things. - not a virus - not a program leaking memory I will check the bios settings soon, apart from that, I'm sure that it's windows doing this to itself.
Just because you haven't done anything to the ram doesn't mean it's perfect still. Is your windows 64bit or 32?
If OP has 4Gb of RAM and its kinda obvious that Windows 7 was reporting 4Gb of RAM his Windows 7 can be only 64bit. A 32bit Windows 7 would report and will work only with 3Gb of RAM.
Yes, turning off, restarting etc does not solve the problem. And I have a 64bit version of windows 7. I've found that on one restart, windows didn't instantly cache all my memory, and I was able to use the laptop normally for an hour or so. On another restart, windows cached all the memory, causing my antivirus firewall to fail starting up, and my whole laptop came to a standstill.
I typed that in and clicked on the exe program, however nothing visually appeared, as in a new window... Does this exe just run in the background once started?
I have had this issue before . For me It was caused by a corrupt installation of total war Rome II . But it can be caused by a lack of memory or a virus. Try scanning for a virus in safe mode . Then try uninstalling the game you installed right before it happened . As a last resort restore it.
No it either does it in a box, or does it on restart (best option) It CAN take a while to complete it. I had one take 5 hours
When I first noticed this problem, I hadn't installed any new programs. So this can't be the cause either.