Acer AOD250 KAV60 freezes up except when playing video....?

I have a 3 yr old Acer AOD250 KAV60 which I upgraded from XP to Win7 after one year. For the past year the computer freezes up randomly. The screen sometimes is blue, other times gray, other times black. A few times it has been pink. I am forced to power off by holding down the power button 10 secs. The event viewer doesn't give any clues as to the reason why this is happening. All I ever find is the event "the previous system shutdown was unexpected" or similar. The strange thing is if I'm playing a video it NEVER freezes. Lately I start Windows Media Player immediately after computer has booted in order to prevent it from freezing. There have been times when only 5 secs after boot the computer freezes. If there is a video playing it will run for hours. None of this ever happens when I start in Safe Mode. Is this a graphics issue? Chipset issue? Motherboard issue? Upgrade from XP to W7 issue? I have already replaced the HDD, upgraded RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB, replaced the AC Power Jack, power cord and battery. All drivers are up to date and virus scans are performed daily.

 

I have an AOA-150 I upgraded from XP to 7. I too had the same issues. In the end, I determined the fault to be the wireless driver. I looked high & low for an updated driver. Found several that were allegedly 7 compliant. The freezes and BSOD continued. Finally disabled the wireless network adapter in Device Manager and bought a mini USB wireless dongle for $8 that works just fine.
As an experiment, I'd suggest you disable your wireless network adapter in Device Manager and see if you have the same symptoms. If the freezes and BSOD stop, that is your problem and you too can get a wireless dongle as seen here: http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10501&cs_id=1050108&p_id=8072&seq=1&format=2

 

^ +1, I saw the same problem and it was the wireless, good advice Nestone50.

 

Thanks for the reply and the possible solution. I tried disabling the wireless adapter and the computer froze to a gray screen within 5 minutes. I also uninstalled the Atheros Driver Installation program through "Programs & Features" under the Control Panel. The computer keeps freezing! Ugh!! So I did a clean install of Windows 7 and since there wasn't a driver installed for wireless, Microsoft installed their choice of Atheros drivers. Now I haven't updated anything on the netbook except the Windows Updates. Microsoft did suggest 1 wireless adapter (optional) update from Atheros after the install which I accepted. I have been running the netbook for days and hours and so far (fingers crossed) not a single problem. Not 100% sure if it was the driver I had installed for the wireless adapter. But looks to me like the issue was somewhere in the Device Manager with drivers conflicting or incompatible with Windows 7.

 

Glad to hear you most likely have it sorted. I understand your problem began before Microsoft's most recent April patch which also is causing the dreaded BSOD. Read about it here:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wind...creen-of-Death-Some-Users-Report-334329.shtml