laptop crashing

[Dagman]

My son's laptop crashes every 1/2 hr or so for no obvious reason. It's not evem warm so a heat issue isn't the problem. It is a HP pavilion, about a year old with Vista installed. He uses it as a work station, no heavy graphics, he doesn't have any games on it, all the windows apps are the genuine article! The restart goes through a self-test every time as if the power had been cut. It happens on both mains and battery. Has anyone had the same? The laptop is under guarantee but from Staples where they don't appear to have any techy people and really there's a lot of data he doesn't want to lose to some dusty shelf in a warehouse 200 miles away! Thanks..Dagman

[wildwood]

Get your son an external hard drive as an early christmas present. They are really cheap nowadays and always handy. The size will depend on how much stuff there is too save. Plug it in the laptop and it will open as another drive in 'My Computer' after the drivers for it have been installed (this will probably happen automatically but if not, you should get a CD with the HDD with the drivers for it).

Simply copy everything you want to keep to the spare Drive. Do it in 5 minutes lots so the lappy doesn't conk out in the middle of copying a large amount of data.

Have you contacted Staples? If they don't have any tech people themselves they may direct you to a repairplace close to you which does work for them.