I have a laptop that's not even a year old it's an acer aspire 300, win. xp, what's happened to me several times is when i turn on my computer it won't let me go into anything not even the internet, it seems to freeze up on me, it won't even let me turn off the computer so i have to unplug the battery and let it run down and then it shuts off and when i go and plug the battery back in it seems to work, why is this happening
Thanks

how much stuff is running in the background it sounds like a memory problem. but i dunno for sure what the memory in that laptop.
laptops need a lot of memory as they share a lot of it try shutting some of the start up stuff off and see if that will improve it. in the sartup thing hit run then type in msconfig and go to the sartup tab and un check a few things . but its best to do this one at a time cause if you shut something off and you need it you go back and recheck that box

Do you have Norton (Symatec) Internet Security running? That program often causes slow down problems when it encounters an error.

Dwight

yes i have norton, it's free with my internet provider, i would like to keep it to protect my computer plus its free.

Have you had this problem since you first used the laptop or has it developed since then?

If the latter, it could be a few different scenarios:

1. Malware
You may have installed malware/spyware onto your system. (VERY common for Internet Explorer users) Try running a scan with Spybot Search & Destroy. Specialized tools do a much better job at detecting this junk than Norton antivirus alone.

2. Norton is miconfigured
Sometimes Norton personal firewall gets a little confused. (My copy gets amnesia regularly) Open the Norton Personal Firewall and make sure internet traffic is allowed, and that your web browsing programs are allowed. You may have to delete firewall rules and re-add them.

3. Bad drivers
Your laptop may have some bad drivers which hang upon shutdown. Check Acer's website for updates.

4. Windows hangs during the "Saving settings" shutdown stage.
This can be corrected with the "uphclean" tool.

Hope this was somewhat helpful