XP Hang when opening All Programs in Start Menu

[thebarslider]

Hi Everyone,

I have come across possibly the most annoying and baffling problem with XP Home Edition. The problem is basically that Windows Explorer seems to crash/hang when:

1. Opening the All Programs section in the Start Menu
2. Right clicking on an icon
3. Navigating through 'deep' folders.

The computer has a 70G hard disk and i have heard windows has problems with large hard disks and there is alot of files on this one.

Other information:

The computer is connected to two others via a hub using the follow IP's:

Computer 1
IP: 192.168.0.1
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS: 192.168.0.1

Computer 2
IP: 192.168.0.2
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS: 192.168.0.1

Computer 3
IP: 192.168.0.3
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS: 192.168.0.1

The hang only occurs on one computer, in this case Computer 2. Computer 1 is connected to the Internet.

Another suggestion i have read is that this is a networking problem.

I have checked the drivers on the computer, ran SpyBot, Adware etc.
Disabled software using msconfig on start up. Checked the Windows files using SFC/SCANNOW. Nothing strange seems to be running when the problem occurs.

If anyone has got any other suggestions please reply to this message as i am at the end tether with this one. The computer is only 4 months old and was fine until recently.

Mark

Thank you for you kind assistance.

 

[gpalmer711]

No problem with a 70gb HD in XP.

Take a look at

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;819017

and see if it may relate to your problem.

How much free space do you have on your HD?

Have you defraged it?

Take a look at

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;819101

and

thread779-873096

Greg Palmer
Free Software for Adminstrators

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[Krickles]

We (my IT department) had a similar issue with:
[ul][li]XP Pro[/li][li]HP machine[/li][li]McAfee[/li][li]Imaging[/li][/ul]
It took a few days to troubleshoot and ended up being a problem with McAfee in combination with the other items above. McAfee sent us a patch and all is well.

Krickles | 1.6180

 

[thebarslider]

I dont have McAfee installed on the computer, but i do have Norton. Although the problem occurs on start up an using msconfig to prevent any unwanted programs runing on start up.

In response to the previous post, about 4G is used on the hard disk and it has not been defragmented for a while although i will try this. The computer is only 3 months old so i seem to think this is not the problem.

The computer freezes completely for 10-15 secs then is ok. You can also get around the problem by ending task on explorer and starting a new one.

Thank you for your kind advice? Does anyone else have more suggestions, this is really driving me up the wall now.

Mark.