Laptop hangs/freezes!?

[BMM389EC]

Hello All

My laptop,not even a year old(running Windows XP) has developed the habit lately of freezing/hanging for no apparent reason. Surfing on the net/working in My documents or whatever,the whole thing just freezes, mouse is useless,keyboard is useless. Only way you can do anything is to hold the power key down till it shuts down and then restart it. I've tried all the "maintenance" stuff on the computer it self(Error Checking, Defrag etc) but it still does it. Installed a game a while ago but nothing else recently. Any ideas?

[Ausatco]

Can you remember when it started to happen?

If so, try a Sytem Restore to a point before that date and see if that fixes your problem.

AA

[yintsinmerite]

I have had exactly this problem - am I right in suspecting you get a few corrupt file messages during the disk check that follows a reboot?

I have found the following

1) It locks up much more often when running on battery than mains - I know my battery needs replacing and am trying to get another so will see what happens then

2) Removing the prefetch files (*.PF) has made things better. As I understand it, the PF files are saves of previous application configurations so deleting them does nothing detrimental to the system as it just rebuilds them as required.

When I noticed the totally unscientific observation that it is more prone to the problem on battery, I tinkered with the power settings, but this did not good. I will be following this thread with interest

[yintsinmerite]

From my perspective, I have 2 virus checkers and also sit behind Zone alarm pro (when online) and so if the problem described is the same as mine, then we may be able to eliminate virus's (or should it be viri ?)

BMM389EC What make of Laptop is it. I have the problem on a Samsung

[yintsinmerite]

When my laptop connects to the internet, it does so via my wireless network. I have a cable modem plugged into a server machine on which one virus checker (Norton), and Zone alarm sit. This then goes out in infrastructure mode (encrypted), to a number of laptops including the one I am having trouble with which is running AVG as a second layer of protection. As such, there is no interference between the two virus checkers. I never dial this machine into the internet and in fact, there are no dial up connections configured at all.

I have paired the startup on this machine down to the absolute minimum, even running it safe mode and still occasionally the lock up occurs. One other charateristic when it fails is the hard disk light being on permenantly. As it is more flakey on battery, I have a suspision that power comes into it somewhere

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

yintsinmerite,

You cannot run two virus checkers on a computer at the same time, it will cause the computer to lockup/freeze.

Take Care,

Richard

[A-V-8R]

My preventitive maintaince is as follows:

Run Spyboot - freebee to erase spyware.

Then run a deep virus scan.

Next run Window Washer. It removes a lot of Microsofts really hidden files. You can go here to learn about them:

http://www.f*ckmicrosoft.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml

But replace the Asterik above with the most likely vowel.

Then run a Registry Fixer. Run it until no errors are found. I use System Suite with good results.

Then run Registry defrag.

Then the Scandisk and Defrag.

This sequence has taken locked machines and brough them back to life without Format C:

[ACK]

Thanks A-V-8R, great site that one. Love the url, haha.

[PickyPerkins]

BMM389EC
I had what sounds like the same problem on a Hewlett Packard 990c desktop running Windows XP Home Edition, except that in addition to freeze ups the mouse cursor would often hesitate and lag behind where it should have been. I found that unplugging the USB optical mouse for a few seconds and then plugging it back in would un-freeze the mouse and return the computer to normal operation, but only until the next time. I am curious to hear whether this works for you also. I assume this fix works by the computer recognizing the re-connected mouse as a new device and correctly installing it.

I found that although I could use this trick to overcome each freeze, the freezes became more frequent (e.g. once in five minutes) and the USB socket was wearing out. The long term fix was to "Restore" to an earlier date and to remove a lot of files and clean up the Registry of things that I knew should not have been there. Also downloaded McAfee Virus Scan (free trial for 30 days) which reported it had found a virus and deleted it: "Virus Name: JS/Logo.dropped". This does not mean anything to me but maybe someone knowledgeable in viruses can say more. However, after two weeks McAfee imposed innumerable advertising pop-ups and no easy way to stop the pop-ups or uninstall it. I finally deleted the McAfee directories and then removed all references to McAfee in the Registry (needed three passes through the registry to do this). After which (for six weeks so far) I have had no more freeze-ups and no more McAfee pop-ups.

My impression is that the freeze-ups started at a time when I was trying out multiple browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, Opera, and Mozilla Firebird) and used the same home page for each of them. The mouse froze up immediately and I got an error message "Error - too many re-directs for URL" or words to that effect. The same sequence occurred on several re-boots. I uninstalled Opera and Firebird after which, for a week or so, there were no more freeze ups. After that the freeze ups started again and occurred with increasing frequency over the next two months. The permanent (I hope) fix was as explained in the previous paragraph.

Zone Alarm was in use the whole time, i.e. there was no correlation between the use of ZA and freeze ups.

Good luck. http://home.infionline.net/~pickyperkins/pi.gif

[yintsinmerite]

You cannot run two virus checkers on a computer at the same time, it will cause the computer to lockup/freeze

Richard - I dont. when on line I am behind 2 checkers (one on local (offending) machine, one on gateway pc). I need the local one as its a machine that I frequently load client data and they are not always too 'clean'

A-V-8R - interesting. I dont think I can type that URL into tghe browser on a client site without being shown the door :uhoh:
I will check later. Thanks

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

yintsinmerite,

Good! You had me worried for a moment there.

Take Care,

Richard

[PickyPerkins]

BMM389EC

Just curious about what turned out to be the solution to your "freezing cursor" problem.

Did unplugging the mouse and then re-connecting it restore control of the cursor (temporarily)? http://home.infionline.net/~pickyperkins/pi.gif