BleepingComputer.com: Compaq Presario C500 Laptop freezes when re-opening the lid.

This seems like a very interesting problem.
The laptop is a few years old, the problem seems to have gotten worse over the last few weeks, and i have an idea of what it may be related to.

first off, its a compaq presario c500, vista home premium, SP1, pretty basic. After years of use, one of the metal hinges for the screen broke in half, so as it sits, there is only one hinge. i thought it was okay, it just wouldnt hold the screen up at much of an angle, but it will if its pretty vertical.
i cant recall when the freezing issue first started, but its been a while. I noticed first when i would close it, and move rooms or something, then open it up, it would be frozen. only way to reset is hold the power button. ctrl-alt-del does nothing. I noticed one time that when i pushed buttons it made a beeping/error chime, but that was only once. just today i had music going, i closed the lid, left it playing, then the second i opened it, it started skipping. so it seems it froze when i opened it. then i went to push the power button, and i pushed the network/wifi button first on accident, which didnt turn the light off for it, BUT upon restart, it was off.
im wondering if its related to the hinge not being there, if it had caused some kind of stress somewhere that opening/closing creates on an interior component. i have done updates and such fairly recently, so it should be pretty well updated. the monitors driver is up to date.

thanks in advance!

This post has been edited by rycdavis: 30 March 2011 - 04:27 PM

Hi rycdavis,

What you describe could be caused by a lot of different things.

First off, if you have your Vista OS up to date it should be SP2, would you double check that please?

The next things that come to my mind are all more hardware related than Vista.

As you suspect, the hinge may well be the culprit. Laptops have wires leading from the base to the display, and also usually have some sort of switches that are activated by opening and closing the lid. Why these things would cause system freezes puzzles me, though.

Another thing common with laptops is dust build up inside the case. Try looking here at the Compaq website for tips on cleaning inside your c500. It appears there are several models of the c500, look at the information plate on the bottom of the computer, are there more letters following the 'C500' (e.g.CTO)? Click here to go to Compaq's Presario C500 CTO page.

The last thing that comes to mind is the CMOS battery could be failing. These can cause all sorts of odd behaviors before they fail completely.

Please let us know how what you find.