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My laptop randomly and intermittently freezes and the screen shows horizontal and vertical lines in a checkered board pattern. I cannot associate it with heavy load or anything in particular, it happens very randomly. The only fix it is to press the power button fora couple of seconds to reboot the machine, and after that it works fine again, until next time it freezes, which can be in the next 10 mins, or after a week. Sometimes it freezes multiple times in a day (>3x). I have windows 7 and ubuntu installed, and it happens with either OS. I have run memtest and other tests and nothing comes up.

how can we start troubleshooting this? It seems like nothing seems to be too badly broken because the computer works just fine ... until of course it crashes randomly.

Here are some specs:

  • I have a Dell XPS L321S. Intel Core i7-3537U
  • chipset: Intel QS77, integrated graphics
  • Memory 8G DDR3 SDRAM
  • SSD 512GB

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    It's likely to be either overheating (monitor your temperatures) or a faulty ram chip (test your memory)
    – DavidPostill ♦
    Commented Sep 24, 2022 at 10:57
  • On a desktop I'd say 'over-heat or under-power'. Not sure if a failing battery on a laptop would react the same for 'under-power'. I'd definitely strip it & clean the dust bunnies out, though, as a first step. Check the battery's remaining life too.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 24, 2022 at 11:16
  • thank you. the temperature seems to run about 80C on average, and the battery diagnostics reports shows ~25% life remaining. If this is a temperature issue, are there any things I should look for in the mother board? I saw similar posts resulting from blown capacitors, but they were mainly pertaining to desktops and those large cylindrical capacitors... not sure if it also applies to laptops.
    – ricardo3889
    Commented Sep 26, 2022 at 6:27

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