Here's my short laundry list of possible causes and solutions:

1. Not enough system memory, so add some. How much is there?
2. Spyware, malware, viruses. A good thorough anti-virus scan may eliminate
something.
3. Too many programs loaded by the system at startup, often caused by
installation of newer printer software, AOL, and a whole slew of other software
that claims to be helping you. Download and run hijackthis, and prune down the
list with extra care. If running XP, run sysconfig to do the same thing, but
with a little less risk.
4. Lots of clutter and junk files left behind by a software ecosystem that
pollutes the hard drive. Every bit of software uses the same Windows %temp%
folder and leaves useless clutter behind. Download and run CCleaner, which will
clean out the junk very surgically and also eliminate useless entries from the
Windows registry.
5. A failing hard drive. Determine the model of hard drive, download
manufacturer's disk diagnostics and run.

.... Ben Myers

On Sun, 9 Dec 2007 10:08:49 -0800 (PST), Leigh
wrote:

My daughter has a NX6110 laptop. There are two issues with it.

1). It can be grindingly slow especially at start-up. Is this because
it's a celeron processor? I've only ever really had full blown P4 or
Athlons so don't really have a means of comparison.

2). It periodically keeps "freezing" in that the screen goes blank
similar to a BSOD (but no text) of various colours. It is not
recoverable beyond restarting. I can't tell if the OS is frozen as
well. It does respond to the up and down brightness but this is
probably not OS related.

Anybody got any ideas?