Why does my computer freeze up instead of going to the screen saver?

bw626: Why does my computer freeze up instead of going to the screen saver?
If I am not using my computer for about fifteen minutes, it will lock up instead of going to the screen saver. It is absolutely non-responsive. I ran a virus scan and it didn’t come up with anything. Sometimes the clock will still work and show the current time, although the rest of the computer is not resposive, but sometimes it freezes with the rest of the computer. Why is this?

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with Vista Professional.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Jim
It could be a number of issues, but most likely, it is an incompatiblity issue. If you recently udpated a driver, like a video driver, that is probably the cause. Roll Back the newer driver you installed to the older version to fix the problem.

There is another program, perhaps even the screen saver itself, which is hanging the system. The screen saver may be the problem itself.

Check out your RAM memory and see if you have any memory left. Freezes like this can easily be caused due to a lack of sufficient RAM memory when you are operating normally in the operating system. The fix solutions are:

To reduce the number of things which are simultaneously running in the System Tray.
Reduce the number of System Services that are running that you don’t need (see Black Viper’s suggestions on the internet on how to reduce System Services):

https://www.blackviper.com/

Run a system wide disk cleanup. CCleaner is free. You can download a free version from filehippo.
There is also a registry problem fixer in CCleaner, well worth running.

https://www.filehippo.com

Run a system defragmentation. Download Auslogics Disk Defrag from filehippo as well.

Doing these last things with CCleaner and Disk Defrag will improve your system performance and are good to do with or without another problem like the freezing.

Answer by Sainath Gedala
install any new antivirus i think your previous one is not working

Answer by Lisa
There have to be two issues:

a. Virus Infection (Use Avast free)

b. Corrupt Registry/System errors (Use Reginout )

I am sure it will fix for you.

Answer by JimG
When your computer freezes up, one of the major causes are registry errors and corrupt files. The registry is what controls communication between hardware, software, and device drivers. When there are errors in the registry, the information cannot be properly communicated, leading the CPU to freeze up or crash. You may even get the “Blue screen of death”.

My recommendation is to scan your computer with a top flight registry cleaner. This is a lot easier and cheaper than bringing it to the computer repair shop. You can get a free scan and diagnosis at