XP Problems

[RebelFox]

Symptoms:-

Suddenly the machine will slow up or freaze up.

I can't run anything from the 'Start' button or the task bar. If I move the mouse over either, I get the hourglass busy symbol instead of the normal active mouse cursor.

Selecting windows update via the internet reboots the machine.

I have firewalls and anti virus software ( constantly updated ) and have virus checked my machine. I think I have a windows xp issue but I have no idea how to solve it.

 

[isibee]

there are 3 things I would look at before doing anything drastic... 1. look at the msconfig startup to see what could be causing the problem. 2. look at the task scheduler and see what is taking the most cpu or memory. 3. make sure you have enough memory to run everything that is needed on the computer.
Get back to me on this and I'll try to help you as best I can.

thanks,
Josée Parent

Communication is the key to success...

http://www.pbase.com/isibee

(photo gallery)

 

[bcastner]

Please, see faq608-4650

 

[RebelFox]

Thanks, I appreciate it. What with one thing and another ( pending redundancy ) I'm in major flap mode.

The windows Task manager shows no applications running, but plenty of processes that are doing nothing at all. One that looks odd is the 'System Idle Process' taking anything up to 99% of CPU yet the CPU usage below the list of Processes shows CPU usage of just 2 %. Th e performance graph shows CPU usage at a low 2%.

I have 523764K memory according to the task manager,333948K of which is free.

The machine itself is less than six months old, had a good track record until a couple of days ago. I tried to find msconfig but by the time I se the .exe in my folders search results my machine reboots itself.

How should I view msconfig?


bcaster:-

please define what 'hijack' means so that I can understand what the FAQ is explaining I fix.

 

[bcastner]

Download and run in this order:

cwshredder *
SpyBot 1.2 *
AdAware *

* = Update the definition files within the program as the first step.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads.php?cat=sp#det

If you still have the problem, download and run Hijack This! and post the log here.

http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/

faq608-4650

 

[isibee]

go to start, run(execute) msconfig, click ok
it will popup and go to the start menu...

thanks,
Josée Parent

Communication is the key to success...

http://www.pbase.com/isibee

(photo gallery)

 

[RebelFox]

isibee:-

Nothing obvious in msconfig

bcaster:-

OK I'll give it a try.

 

[linney]

To get further information about the error look in your Event viewer.

Look in the System or Application folder. You can get to the Event Viewer via right click My Computer icon and select Manage.

Any errors logged in the Event Viewer can be expanded by double clicking on the error line.

Take any event error I.D. number and search for it on this site.

http://www.eventid.net/events.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr.../prodtechnol/winxppro/support/EE_winxppro.asp

Also check any "Information" line that mentions "savedump" and you should find reference to "recovered from a bug check". This is the Stop Error that caused your problem.

You can also turn off "automatically restart after an error" so it will just halt at the fault and display the full Stop Error and blue screen.

Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties .
On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery .
Click to clear the Automatically restart check box under System failure , and then click OK . The error message on a blue screen should remain on the screen so you can record the error information.


"One that looks odd is the 'System Idle Process' taking anything up to 99%."


That figure is OK for System Idle Process. System Idle Process in the Task Manager process list reflects the idle unused cycles of the processor. The higher the better. The figure you should look at is CPU Usage in the box below the process list or under the Performance tab. If usage is high here you may have a problem. Usage will vary as you load and unload various programs.