BIG problem with my peecee (Please help me)

I know that it has nothing to do with my lovely Amigas. There I don't have serious problems. But, please, I want your help for this one.

Running a peecee with WinXP Home SP3 blah blah...

At random times, my computer freezes (I cannot do anything, no mouse movements, no keyboard, nothing at all) and then, after some seconds, it comes to normal again. I also noticed, that the HD led is always steady lit when this happens.

Any suggestions, what is going on?

I've run a fully scan on all 3 hard disk drives I have, but apart from some tracking cookies, there is nothing else in my system.

Thanks in advance.

This sounds like a Hard disk error.

START / RUN
type "cmd" press enter
type "chkdsk c: /f /r"
it will prompt to restart computer.. do so and it will scan on startup
repeat for all drives

If you have Spinrite by Gibson Research (GRC.com) then boot from this and scan disks. (I swear by it)

Gary

Thank you so much. I will try it when the scan finishes.

I had a similar problem a few weeks ago.
Pc would freeze completely for about 1 min then resume. This would happen every 5-10 minutes.
Turned out to be a faulty PCI Wireless card.
As soon as i removed PC was fine again.

Oh... And I have a Wireless PCI card installed Mike. oh: (Tell me the model to go crazy!)

If I will unplug it and then plug it again, will fix the problem? Sometimes it needs that.

a refit cant do any worse so its always worth a try.
Unfortunately i cant remember the model i just know it was a Texas Instruments card.

Mine one is a NetGear WG311T.

another thing

another thing

Because of the thread of viruses and problems with pc's a lot of users decide to mix anti-virus packages. (you gave it away, i run a scan )

What happens, is like having 3 girlfriends and two of them meat eachother when you are kissing one: there will be some investigation like 2 or 3 minutes without you being responsive (or you could decide to hang yourself)....

Please take it from me: no more than ONE REALTIME ANTI VIRUS :nod: It is low level magic certainly on XP, Vista something BAD happens when they examine the same FILE.

This is a proven good explanation, but I cannot claim that it is your prob.

Who has 2 or more anti-virus tools running simultaneously?

addon

addon

check what packages could contain realtime antivirus, disable them.

Remove all anti virus, anti spyware, re-install one of them fresh copy.

if you have legal microsoft xp: microsoft security essantials (all in one)

for a scanner you could use freeav: uncheck the realtime scanner (so you can scan for viruses, but not automated.

do not use NORTON stuff

---------- Post added at 00:54 ---------- Previous post was at 00:52 ----------

Who has 2 anti-virus tools running?

A lot of people without realising..

jvdbossc said:

check what packages could contain realtime antivirus, disable them.

Remove all anti virus, anti spyware, re-install one of them fresh copy.

if you have legal microsoft xp: microsoft security essantials (all in one)

for a scanner you could use freeav: uncheck the realtime scanner (so you can scan for viruses, but not automated.

do not use NORTON stuff

---------- Post added at 00:54 ---------- Previous post was at 00:52 ----------

Who has 2 anti-virus tools running?

A lot of people without realising..

Click to expand...

I have only AVG in my system.

why

why

The only reason why I pointed this out, because the anti-virus is realtime and can cause long hang-ups.

Would have look at it anyway... Could also be that there is a leftover from the past.. (of previous products)

Could be another prob, like other members suggested, like hardware, acpi, and .. ..

My first check on xp is always check the disk chkdsk c: /f (press Y) and reboot..

There are tools to control what is started: start.. run .. msconfig :shhh:

Also clean the machine ccleanr, and have a look what is started...

DRIVERS are also low level so..

Thanks for your info my friend.

But I think Mike came closer to my problem.

ok

ok

I am sharing info nog given by others on a topic of course ..

Just addons...

I hope you get it fixed

The suggestions so far, whilst helpful, are all guesswork. Before you do anything else first try to work out what the cause of the system hanging is. To do this you need to have a look in the system logs and see what was exactly logged at the times when the system froze. These logs can point you to exactly the cause, or at least some Google searches to reveal it.

To look at the logs, right click on "My Computer" and select "Manage". Now go to the System Tools/Event Viewer section and select System and scroll through to look for any yellow Warnings or Red errors flagged in the list and the times that match when your system froze. The source shown for these events will indicate the service or application that was to blame. It will also show an event number which you can google to find out more. Also look in the other Event Viewer sections to see if any other events were flagged yellow or red.

If you find some of these events in the logs post what they are here and I might be able to help.

You did also mention you are using AVG. Uninstall that ASAP. It might be free, but it isn't good. It can conflict with a lot of hardware and other software and cause system freezing and hanging. I highly recommend the free Comodo security suite (virus checker and firewall) as a replacement.

There are really a huge amount of free Anti-Viruses now, so I really don't know what to install. Others say AVG is good, others not. Others say F-Prot is good, others not.....blah...blah...

@Phantom

did you do the chkdsk scans? HDD errors is the most common cause of the type of system freezes you describe, it will not hurt to do it and will confirm the drives are OK.

Antivirus causes all sorts of "discussion" on here, so my suggestion is to remove AVG run it for ten mins without antivirus and if the problem persists then AVG was not the cause so put it back on again.

As H said the logs can give it away but some things are quicker to do than googling logs like the removal of the Wireless card, pull it out start up, if the problem persists then it is not that either so put it back in!

One thing you can do to get to the bottom of this is to run an app like Coolbeans Sysinfo (free) it shows amongst other things CPU usage on a bar chart - does the CPU go to 100% when the lock up occurs?? If yes then it is more than likely software related - do the ctrl alt delete and see what is using the cpu. If it does not go to 100% then I still go with the HDD problem or hardware related.

Gary

do you have indexing and search enabled?

could be a hard disk failure... some bad sectors, maybe weak sectors... it would worth to download HARD DISK SENTINEL and use it to see the health of your HDD's... Had the same probs , and apparently there where 2 bad sectors in my HDD, that were automatically rellocated...

add on if it is the hd

add on if it is the hd

Like previous post some addons:

If you think it is a real hard disk problem, clone the to DVD writer using ghost for dos boot cd. (usual sources..)

After you have a good image of the HD you can do a full format to rule this out.

Nobody mentioned SMART technology, it is over 10 years old know :readit:

Check if it is enabled in BIOS or download a tool to read it! If you do not know it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.