Help w/ partial crash - Explorer having troubles?

[Guest]

I had been working on my PC, and I inserted an old game to play. As the game
started up it seems sluggish. I went back out to the desktop, pulled up the
task manager, and Explorer was taking all extra CPU cycles (typically 99%).

I rebooted, and I'm getting through the boot to where the desktop is up and
startup programs are starting to launch, but it never finishes. Same
sypmtom, i.e., Explorerer >99% of CPU. The system is occassionally accessing
the disk (from watching the LED).

I've reset a couple of times. I rebooted to safe mode. Same thing. Safe
mode comes up and desktop is up, but anytime I mouse over the taskbar, I get
an hourglass. I can get task manager, and from there I've gotten a command
window to run. I've run chkdsk /f on all my hard drives (either in the
command window, or after reboot). But so far nothing so far seems to be
working to get the system to fully boot. I'm running chkdsk /r now on the
system to see if that helps, but it's a long process.

I'd appreciate any help folks can give me. (I'm now on another PC in the
house).

Thanks in advance!

 

[Chuck]

Try starting up in safe mode if all else fails.

In my case, I'd likely use task manager first to see if something unexpected
was running as an application or service, and try killing it. If a driver is
hanging the system up, Device manager is a likely tool. Once I knew what was
causing the problem, I'd try to find a more specific solution.

Boot logging may be a useful tool when others fail.

 

[Guest]

Try starting up in safe mode if all else fails.

I did. Same thing happens.

In my case, I'd likely use task manager first to see if something unexpected
was running as an application or service, and try killing it. If a driver is
hanging the system up, Device manager is a likely tool. Once I knew what was
causing the problem, I'd try to find a more specific solution.

Tried killing things in task manager too. Never found what was wrong.

Boot logging may be a useful tool when others fail.

I can't recall how to use boot logging. I know it's possible, but I don't
remember how to enable it or where to find the log.

FWIW, I did get things up using msconfig, and going to Diagnostic Services
mode. Things came up fine. So now I'm selectively enabling things. I'm
through system.ini, win.ini, all the microsoft services, and a few others,
but haven't enabled statups yet. I am, however, uninstalling Norton
Systemworks 2006 right now, as I'm suspicious something in Norton is the
source of the problem. I'll uninstall it, then try full boot capability
(incluing startups), and then reinstall Norton SW 2006, and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Guest]

Well, I'm not sure what happened, but after trying msconfig (see below in my
reply to Chuck), it's been fixed.

What I tried was:
Start:Run:msconfig
Then I went to diagnosic mode. Rebooted. Things came up fine.
Enabled (from msconfig) system.ini and win.ini. Rebooted. Things came up
fine.
Enabled all Microsoft services. Rebooted. Things came up fine.
Enabled a all services except Norton. Rebooted. Things came up fine.
Tried to uninstall Norton Systemworks 2006. Got an error message in the
uninstall process saying the uninstall failed. From msconfig I went to
normal startup. Rebooted.

Things are working fine now, including Norton!?!?! I'm not sure what
happened, but at least I'm back up.