Hi,

I have an HP Pavilion G6 Notebook running Windows 7 Home Premium with SP1.
It has a 64bit OS.
It's been working fine until all of a sudden it simply froze !
I waited for a few minutes for it to unfreeze but nothing happened so I just left if for about half an hour but it was still frozen when I returned.
The only way I was able to turn the laptop off was by holding down the power button which I was reluctant to do as I know this can cause problems to the HDD. (I had tried ctrl Alt Delete but this did not work)
I then turned on the laptop again, it rebooted but then eventually froze again so I had to force a shutdown.
After several attempts (some in safe mode) I was still unable to make the freeze go !
I tried BOOTING into recovery mode by pressing the ESC  key on bootup.
I tried to restore to a previous state but this did not work either.
After several attempts at this I decide to do a recovery back to factory defaults.
When rebooting it went to a black screen with text saying it was unable to load without the windows disk so Inserted this but it still showed the black screen with this same message.
I then did the recovery process again with the disk in the drive and it seemed to work but when I started to enter the details it asked for it froze again.
I left this over night but it was still frozen in the morning.
Can someone please help.
Thanks
Its either a bad HDD or RAM Problem I am guessing....

Do you have another computer to burn a CD or DVD or make a bootable thumb drive? If so I would boot this laptop off of memtest86 and make sure the RAM passed about 3 full tests... takes about an hour or so on most modern computers.

To test the HDD if you know the make of the HDD that is in this system you can make a bootable disc or usb drive to boot the system and test the HDD for errors. Since the system freezes up quickly you are unable to install any tools to it to test with that way.

If this system has a SSD instead of a HDD we need to know that as well as for there are other options with a SSD.I do have another laptop which I believe is the exact same spec (bought for my son)
How do I get a bootable thumb drive and how do I run the tests?
ThanksCan someone please tell me how to obtain and run memtest86.
Also how to check the HDD for errors. What do I need to do.
Thanks in advance
download memtest (http://memtest.org/). Burn it to a cd using a dedicated .iso burning utility (http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm), make sure the cd drive is at the top of the boot order in bios, then boot to the newly created cd and run the utility.

Hard Drive Diagnostics:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287
Make sure you select the tool which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), to make the CD bootable.
For Toshiba drives, see here: http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=ServicesSupport/FujitsuDrivesUSandCanada/SoftwareUtilities#diagnostic
Hi Allan,
I started the memtest which lasted about 8mins and then the laptop simply switched off.
I noticed the core temp rising considerably and when I rebooted a message appeared saying that there was a thermal shutdown due to overheating.
Do you think this is the underlying problem?
 I took the laptop into a new epair shop and the guy suggested he CLEANED the fan and then replace it if necessary. Is this SOMETHING I could do myself (with a bit of guidance). Is it possible the overheating has damaged other components..It usually shuts down before any other damage can happen. You can search YouTube about cleaning or changing the fan.Thanks Dave.
I have taken out the fan and it had about a 1cm thick layer of dust built up.
Is isopropanol the only cleaning liquid that can be used on the parts with thermal compound?
Is it imperative to clean these areas and reapply fresh compound ?
Thanks
Yes...Whilst I have the laptop open, is there anything else I should check?
Is it likely that the freezing was caused by a blocked fan or could there be something else causing it?I have just put the laptop back together, I went to turn it on but nothing happened ! The light on the laptop next to where the power cable goes into the laptop, turned red. I changed the battery but still the same thing happened.
What would cause this to happen.The error codes for the LED will be listed in the Manual...they are all different
Unfortunately the manual doesn't have anything of DETAIL about the power lights.
There is no mention of what  a red light means.  It only says when off its either off or hibernation. Great help that is 😉Solved the power issue. Simply RECONNECTED the internal cable which obviously wasn't put in properly.
Laptop boots up but still freezes after about 30 secs.
I did notice a message come up saying:

HP Battery Alert

The system has detected the storage capacity of the battery stated below to be very low. For optimal performance, this battery may need to be replaced.

Primary (internal)  battery (601)

Could this cause the laptop to freeze?