laptop freezing

[mosta]

two or three weeks ago, I think, my laptop (ibm thinkpad a31p, win xp pro, sp 2, pentium 4m (I think; not pentium M) started failing to complete the shut down process. I get the screen "windows is shutting" down and it's stuck there. about three days ago the laptop started freezing up while I was using it. I've just pieced together that it seems to happen while I'm typing more than a few words of text. specifically it's frozen repeatedly while working on a word doc, while typing a post on 2+2, and while typing an email in yahoo web mail. I do type some short emails and type url's and other miscellany without freezing. I also played poker for a few hours without freezing (and there was a little typing involved in that). I tried using my backup clone hard drive to boot from, which was cloned after the problem started and had the same problem. then I went back to a system restore point, and went 2 weeks back to try to be before whatever happened. didn't solve it.

what now? does this sound like a software or a hardware problem? I can reformat my HD and reinstall win xp from the ibm hidden partition. I guess I might should just do it now since I don't really have other options.

any guidance or advice? (also, the machine was manufactured in around 2001, but was unsold or unopened so IBM "recertifed" it "as new" and I bought it just over a year ago. I've installed some random software, some of which maybe I should have been more cautious about, but not all that much. i tried uninstalling all but the bare bones, including zonealarm firewall, antivir free anti-virus, process guard, weatherbug, maybe a couple more, and that didn't fix it.)

Whenever my computers start acting weird i find using a spyware tool and a virus tool usually help. There are a couple good free ones. Try AVG anti virus and Ad-Aware.

[mosta]

msft spyware found nothing. anti-vir found nothing. so I reformatted my hard drive from the ibm system recovery partition. it froze while installing windows. I guess that means it's a hardware problem. I think the system board was replaced right after I got the machine for some problem (apparently early A31P's had a problem...). I'm just about ready to put it out the window.

if you wanted the best, most reliable laptop out there what would you get? I thought that was supposed to be IBM. now my faith in them is lost. recent dells I've seen seem junky. is there not a boutique manufacturer out there that does good work? or is it a hideous fact of life that computers have a lifespan of 2 to 3 years (and I don't mean obsolescence)?

[wonderwes]

Any laptop can be a bust. I would say Toshiba makes some great laptops. I see nothing wrong with Dells. A dell complete care warranty will cover the laptop fully. I had a friend have a 3 year old model, it started acting slow and messing up. He soaked it in a bucket of water (3 days), call them up, said it was not working, 3 weeks later, got a new top of the line model.

Alienware and Voodoo make good high quality laptops very expensive but will last you if you dont mess it up. Have you tried maybe using some compressed air to blow some dust out of it because it may be overheating.