Hard lock, working Alt-Tab

[amoe]

Hi all,

Someone at work has this issue. Maybe once a month, the computer will
lock up. The cursor still moves, but clicking does nothing. Ctrl-Alt-
Del does not work. Alt-Tab does display the list of windows, but it
does not switch. No other keyboard commands work. The machine has to
be reset after this, since nothing can fix it.

Does anyone have any idea what causes this? I thought it might be
related to network drives. Sometimes it happens when the user opens
his Documents folder, which is located on the network. However,
unplugging the network cable does not fix it.

The machine is a Dell running Windows XP Professional, fully updated,
with the 2000 theme.

Thanks,
David

 

[Tim Meddick]

Contrary to popular opinion, NT-based operating systems are not infallible and do
crash from time to time.

The NT generation of operating systems are very much more reliable than their DOS
predecessors were.

But they still crash, especially when there is a user directly making demands on
system resources as opposed to an unattended server setup

Regularly using [chkdsk] and [defrag] on your system drive can lessen the chances of
a crash in some circumstances and also minding how many programs you have open and
how much resources you are using also helps.

If your system crashes on a regular basis, as yours seems to be doing, it may also
help to make a note of exactly what you were trying to do when the crash occurred and
what other applications were running.

It might be possible, then, to make a correlation between the instances as to what
possibly was the cause...

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.