Question My Sony VAIO Laptop keeps freezing every 2-3 seconds or 5-10 seconds.

[Maddy18]

Hi,
My sony vaio keeps freezing completely every 2-3 seconds or 5-10 seconds.
I am clueless as to the cause of the freezes.When I start my laptop it works fine for 3-4 minutes then the freezes start and dont stop on their own,but sometimes rarely they have stopped in the past and let me play Valorant but this happened randomly and only 3-4 times so far.I have checked multiple times,the freezes dont show up in BIOS at all.The BIOS menu works fine.

I will explain the nature of the freezes.They come suddenly every 10-15 seconds on average and my pc just stops and gets stuck on what I am doing,my mouse doesnt move at all and moves to the correct spot only after the freeze ends.Sounds dont play when the freeze occurs.For some reason I can still play Valorant(meaning the game runs)but the game isnt fun due to the freezing.I dont see anything weird going on in task manager such as any cpu spikes at the time of freezing.Nothing seems weird in task manager when freeze occurs.The PC continues from where it froze when the freeze ends.

I have 8 GB RAM,Foxinn Pro 128 gb SSD,Intel HD 4000,SONY VAIO SVS13112ENB laptop from 2012.

I sincerely hope this is not something related to hardware since I dont have money to fix the laptop right now and probably in the near future(I am a college student)

I know its an old laptop but I know it would run smoothly if the freezes werent there.

I tried a lot of google searching but my particular case of freezing,I couldnt find online.

Can someone please help fix my problem?What could be the root cause of this issue?How can I fix it?Do you need any more info?
The issue was persisting even after an OS reinstall,and was showing up in the Windows 10 installation process.
Is it a rootkit?I hope its not hardware related
The issue began in 2024 exactly a whole year ago,and I stopped using the laptop completely for half a year since I was admitted to a hospital.When I started using it again,beginning January 2025,it didn't show any signs of the problem.
My laptop was completely fine before I had upgraded its RAM and SSD for half a year,starting 2025 January till a few weeks ago until I got it home from the service center.

 

[rgd1101]

how full is the ssd?
what the cpu temp?

 

[Maddy18]

The SSD is nearly full with 16 gb left out of 108 or so since I have Windows 10+Valorant installed on it on128 gb SSD.Temps are normal(I can't give you the exact temp since the laptop isn't open,do you need the exact temp?)

 

[Ralston18]

Seconding @rgd1101 in regards to the SSD capacity.

My rule of thumb is to limit any given drive to 70-80% of full capacity.

I will add the suggestion to look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

Either one or both tools may be capturing some error code, warning, or even an informational event just before or at the time of the laptop freezing.

 

[Maddy18]

Alright,I will check into this and get back to you Ralston.I need to sleep here so I will post my reply after 14-15 hours.

 

[geofelt]

A near full ssd will slow down and not recover.
I suspect thermal throttling.
Verify that your cooler fans are working.
As a test, set the windows power profile to balanced.
Then set the maximum cpu % down from the default 100% to 99%.

 

[punkncat]

IMO, stop spending money on that system. Incredibly outdated and obsolete hardware to be gaming on a level of don't spend anything.

What market are you in and do you have any level of budget?

 

[Maddy18]

I checked the temps and they average around 70°C.Its probably not thermal throttling. The windows power profile is on balanced already and changing maximum CPU power percent had no effect from 100 to 99 or even 90.
The Fan does get loud sometimes but the PC is way cooler than before the RAM upgrade.

I can't buy a new PC yet since I don't have money,I was thinking I would be able to play Valorant on this and it did work well but the freezing issue ruined it for me.

I can confirm its not the SSD,the issue was before also when I had an HDD in the laptop.I checked reliability monitor and there wasn't anything pointing to the freezes.Event Viewer...I don't know how to pinpoint issues with Event Viewer.


If I will buy a laptop here in India,it would be a refurbished ₹20K good enough to play Valorant on.