My computer is locking up at random times. Symptoms are: clicking on app to open it, I get an hour glass with arrow show wait condition; everything except mouse cursor locks up. If mouse is left clicked 5 to 7 more times then there's a single beep and the mouse then locks up too. A reboot is necessary at this point.
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I didn't see anything suspicious in Hijack This log.
There's a possibility problem is due to bad sectors on hard disk --- can't open file due to disk errors --- or a memory fault. Test hard disk and memory using disk manufacturer's diagnostics and Memtest86+. All the diagnostics you need and more are on the UBCD. Post back with diagnostic results.
Also try booting with all non MS services and startup items disabled using msconfig. That will eliminate AV, firewall, and some other possibilities.
Link to UBCD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.
It could be many things and as Wilcomp and Vallis said above, I would suggest to open the computer case and check for bad cap: http://www.badcaps.net/pag
And also see inside if there is a lot of dust formed ....
Ignore my suggestions if they are repeat suggestions but just wanted to put a quick list together
1. over heating ( which as per above could be caused by dust build up or the heat sink not making correct contact with the processor )
2. the power supply does not supply enough power / wattage - have you upgraded any hardware recently before this started happening ?
3. Bad memory ie RAM or possibly hard drive as per above.
I would suggest http://www.memtest.org/ and assuming this is windows xp / 2000 and or possibly vista then go into the recovery console / recovery mode and do a chkdsk /r on the hard drive ( this might take a while )
Also ultimate boot cd has some checking tools - or you can make your own Bart Pe disc ( which you have to do due to licensing issues ) and add the relevant add ons for checking your hard drive etc.
I think there are some other utils that can check graphics card memory etc which may do a some what better job - if I can find these I will post back.
If you have some spare RAM then I would try that instead of the RAM you are using now and see if that helps at all.
If you really don't want to do a reinstall, a Repair installation of Windows may be a second-to-last resort.
:-)
This leaves all your programs and data intact while reinstalling Windows.
1. Boot the computer from your XP CD (if this won't boot, you may need to change the order of boot devices in BIOS setup).
2 Eventually you will see the "Welcome To Setup" screen. Press the Enter key to start Windows Setup.
3. Be careful NOT to choose R, which is "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console".
4. Accept the License Agreement.
5. Windows setup will search for existing Windows installations.
6. Select the XP installation you want to repair (there is usually only one) and now press R to start the repair.
More complete instructions on how to do this, complete with pictures, are here:
http://www.michaelste
Before doing that, or a clean install as gecko_au2003 suggests, I recommend spending a few $s on imaging software. That will save future similar pain. See here:
http://mywitsend.co.n
Wo
Hi All, seems it was related to the vlc media player installed on my computer. No matter what I did it would freeze the entire system. I have since removed it and replaced it with another player. That does seem to have done the trick. Thanks again. May I distribute the points to more than one of the helpers? I think I can just want to make sure I do it right.
You can distribute points as you see fit.
You can accept your solution and distribute points or close the question with no points distributed.
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:)
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by: djhathPosted on 2009-02-25 at 19:23:15ID: 23741259
First culprit could be something like your anti-virus software. Wouldn't hurt to disable that to see if affects system performance.
You could also have some type of malware interfering with your system. I would recommend scans with SpyBot, Malwarebytes
Something that might help clue what is going on is once you encounter the hour glass, try to get to the Windows Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL), get to the Performance tab to see visually if you notice a spike in CPU utilization.
If so, try to get the hourglass to repeat itself, and go to the Process tab, rank the processes in descending order by the CPU column, notice for anything significant 25%, 50%, 75% or better. I'd say anything less than 10% is likely negligible.