Help requested - PC freezes whilst surfing

[Tartan Giant]

Dear chaps and chapesses,

I request help with a snag my son has with his PC whilst on the WWW.


He has a DELL desktop:
2.66Ghz
512 RAM
80gig HDD
with a bog-standard dial up modem (gets 46 instead of 56k).

The problem he has with it (after 14 months of no glitches) is that just lately the PC freezes shortly after logging on the WWW and minutes (if that) after the browsing starts.

The mouse arrow (standard mouse) slows down and then the "hour glass" appears and the PC just chunters away doing nothing and freezes. The only way he can gain control is a 'hard' switch off.

On restart, he has full functionality, but if he logs on to the internet, the mouse does not play for long, and the hour-glass appears, and then it's curtains!

Ctl+Alt+Del shows about 20 "processes" running, but he nor I knows which would be the best ones to disable before surfing. On the other hand, I would suspect one should not have to disable any "processes" with that high spec processor and the whacking memory available.

Any assistance would be gratefully received.

Thanks

TG

PS: He has done a Disk Clean Up and got rid of Temp Internet Files and then a defrag, but the machine is playing up still.

[OVERTALK]

You can't go wrong if you use PCMedik (ver 6) and System Mechanic v4 to get the rot out of your system.

PCMedik is so easy to use (just two mouse-clicks and a reboot)

System Mechanic doesn't require any rocket science either.

System mechanic is from www.iolo.com

PCMedik is NOT from www.pcmedik.com

USE this link (http://www.google.com.au/search?q=pcmedik&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=) to access a whole range of providers.

Doesn't matter which utility you use first (loads of overlap and redundancy). Seems to work with all flavours of Windows. Norton System works may be better but it's more complex (and bug-ridden). They concentrate on restoring sanity to the registry first up (and then sart spring-cleaning all over).

If you try them and they do the trick, come back and tell everybody. They got me out of a few holes and tend to keep the machine at peak performance.

[Tartan Giant]

Thanks a lot OVERTALK.

We shall see what the PCMEDIC does for the sick one!!


Cheers

TG

[Ray Darr]

I had the same headache after upgrading to AdSubtract Pro. AdSubtract was a great program. Pro also - but it interfered with my machine somehow. I uninstalled it and haven't had any browsing issues since!

Here was the thread I had going a few weeks ago on this:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=123704

Good Luck.
~R.D.

[Tartan Giant]

Many thanks for that 'gen' Ray Darr........... will let you know how things pan out.

Cheers

TG

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Tartan Giant,

I would run Ad-Aware and/or Spybot along with something like McAfee's Stinger on the computer to see what was going on in there.

Take Care,

Richard

[Tartan Giant]

Hello Richard,

I shall get him to do that, and report back.

Many thanks for your time.

Cheers

TG