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XP Locking up / Freezing

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Tangalooma_2006

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Posted June 22, 2011 at 10:00AM

JYPX

You posted in a thread a couple of days ago that "I had just solved an XP lockup/freeze problem, after months, where all the clues were leading me down the wrong path. Google had the answer but it was on page 20 - It would be great to save someone from a load of frustration at some point.

I'm getting the same thing almost daily and would appreciate a link to the answer in case it solves my lockups too

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Tangalooma_2006

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Posted June 23, 2011 at 7:34AM

Anybody got any ideas as to why my PC keeps locking up / freezing. Running XP SP3 It seems to happen completley randomly. Ctrl + Alt + Delete doesn't work and the only way I've found to resolve it is to turn the power off at the wall and start again.

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gengiscant

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Posted June 23, 2011 at 9:14AM

You have very likely a virus, have a look at this: CTRL

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wee eddie

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Posted June 23, 2011 at 9:25AM

Firstly: Turning off at the wall is a recipe for disaster and best avoided as the odds favour a dead PC and a Hard Drive that is potentially unreadable.

Most PC Cases have a second Button on the Front allowing for a Re-Boot.

What Anti Virus Software and Anti Malware Programs are you running? Have you done any Maintenance lately? Cleared the Cookies, Defragged the Hard Drive, that kind of thing.

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Les28

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Posted June 23, 2011 at 10:16AM

In addition to the previously suggested advice, could you open task manager, ctrl+alt+delete, have a look at the bottom of the task manager window, any tab in task manager, Processes How Many?, alongside that CPU Usage, What % is shown.

How does the pc perform in Safe Mode? Any freeze ups?

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Tangalooma_2006

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Posted June 23, 2011 at 12:15PM

Thank you to those trying to help.

Task manager shows CPU Usage 20% but drops to 4% , Processes show 50 , system Idle process seems to be using the most CPU 80-95 even if I leave everything alone i.e do not use keyboard or mouse.

I am running AVG Free edition Anti Virus , CCleaner which I run every day on its default settings and Piriform defragler at least weekly.

A full scan using AVG shows no virus’s. Not tried running in safe mode

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted June 23, 2011 at 12:21PM

FReeezing PC

  1. Overheat due to faulty / blocked fans (clean)

  2. PSU voltages (change PSU)

  3. Household power surges fridge etc switching on/off

  4. faulty memory stick try memtest http://www.memtest86.com/

  5. virus or spyware scan for both especially if shutting down with in a few minutes of switch on or internet use

  6. driver conflicts especially graphics cards get the latest drivers for your equipment

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Les28

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Posted June 23, 2011 at 2:16PM

In addition to other suggested possibilities, in Task Manager, System Idle should be in the very high 90%s when you open Task Manager from desktop without other programs being opened and running. If I leave everything alone I have System Idle 99%, CPU usage either 0 or 1%

If you leave Task Manager open on the Processes Tab for a while, do you notice any item in the list using a lot of CPU%, apart from System Idle?

How much RAM memory and how large is hard drive and how much is free space?

Does the freezing only happen once and after rebooting the pc runs OK all day then, or does it freeze again at random?

Try running for a while in Safe Mode and see if it freezes.

As well as all other suggested possibilities I'm just wondering if you maybe need to trim that list of 50 processes running. Do you know how many StartUp items are running in msconfig? Look at XP here to see how many items ticked in Startup Tab in msconfig

link text

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Tangalooma_2006

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Posted June 24, 2011 at 9:01AM

I have 15 items running at start up. The operating system is on a partition on a larger drive. The partition is 39.5 GB with 22.5 GB free. I have 2GB ram. The freezing happens irregularly and does not seem to be restricted to any particular program.

I've run Spybot Search & Destroy and a full virus scan using AVG

I left Task manager on yesterday but saw no unusual activity but the PC did not lock up either.

I'll try running in safe mode today and see what , if anything, happens

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Les28

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Posted June 24, 2011 at 11:28AM

Have you had a look inside yet to make sure it's not dust blocking cooling vanes around cpu cooler, that sort of thing, as mentioned earlier by Fruit Bat? If it can reboot again straight away after having the freeze up it's possibly not overheating, but have a look for dust anyway and have a look for bad caps at the same time.

link text

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Les28

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Posted June 24, 2011 at 11:34AM

Have you tried running memtest as also suggested in Fruit Bat's post to eliminate that, or if you've got two separate 1GB sticks of ram try running with just one for a while, to eliminate any problems with one or the other sticks.

Anything showing in Event Viewer at the time of the shutdowns or any recurring errors there?

link text

Have a look in Device Manager, see if any problem markings

link text

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