I have a Dell Latitude Laptop using Windows XP. I took it to Geek Squad because it was skipping and the freezing up when I played DVDs or any kind of audio. When it freezes I have to turn it off witut shutting it down. It also wouldn’t freeze right away..it freezes into about 10 minutes of playing the DVD. It was also making weird noises when it froze. Best Buy informed me that the noise wasn’t any hardware issue, but the kind of noise the computer makes when it’s frozen. They said nothing was wrong hardware wise, and that I had 6 viruses on the laptop. Well now, all those viruses are removed, and my laptop is still skipping and freezing when I play DVDs..to the point where I have to turn off the computer without shutting it down. Also, now it freezes and makes a weird noises when I’m not playing any audio.
If it’s not viruses, and geek squad said everything is fine with the computer physically, then what is it?
It could be the DVD player is going bad. Does it also freeze when playing a music CD? If so, then the drive is bad.. If not, it still might be the DVD drive – but harder to tell for sure. Noises only come from moving parts. A laptop moving parts are only the DVD drive, hard drive and fans. That’s it…
Now, it could be the laptop is overheating for some reason, playing DVDs uses more CPU power (a lot more than music CD), and if your CPU fan is seizing up, that could cause crashes or freezes…
See if you can clear any vents/fans with some compressed air and try again…. Otherwise, see if you can find a replacement DVD drive (Ebay – but some of those may be marginal too…)