Mouse keeps freezing!

[Sophie Borodin]

Hi,

I bought a Dell 2400 about 4 months ago. After 2 months my mouse
started freezing several times a day while I'm surfing in IE 6.0. I
have XP Home 2002. My mouse will suddenly freeze, often when I'm
clicking on the address bar to go to www.mail.yahoo.com but it does it
at other times too. When the mouse freezes using ctrl-alt-del or any
keys does nothing and I have to shut the computer off manually.

I thought the problem might be the new Logitech optical mouse I
started using, but switching back to my old Dell mouse did no good.

Today I turned the Hardware Acceleration down to the lowest setting,
turned the color quality down to medium, and downloaded and ran
Ad-Aware (which removed 23 files). I was hoping this might take care
of the problem, but my computer just froze again, the third time
today. The only other program I've added is F-Secure 2004.

I'm at my wit's end. Any suggestions on what I should do next? Is
the problem possibly IE itself and should I try a different browser,
and if so, which one?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sophie

 

[WSZsr]

Start>Run>"msconfig". Go to the "startup" tab. Remove checks from
everything and reboot. Does it still freeze up? If it doesn't, add them
back one at a time until you find the offender.

My guess is that F-Secure is the culprit. I would uninstall it and enable
XP's built-in firewall.

 

[Colin Wilson]

Start>Run>"msconfig". Go to the "startup" tab. Remove checks from

everything and reboot. Does it still freeze up? If it doesn't, add them
back one at a time until you find the offender.

Wonder if it could be spyware, although as WSZsr says, it could well be
the virus checker. I used to get this regularly using Kaspersky AVP until
I restricted filesizes to be checked automatically (unless specifically
trying to access the file) - simple things like opening a directory would
cause the virus checker to scan the entire contents before giving control
back to me. That said, AVP is the best all-round virus killer i`ve ever
used, and would recommend it in a heartbeat.

You could always try a quick spyware check, just in case - IE is easy for
malicious apps to patch into, and I rarely use it on my system. I use
Opera (www.opera.com) for my normal day-to-day browsing - much more
secure, and quite fast

I`ve got "newbie level" tips here for setting up Spybot Search & Destroy
here (they might be of use)

http://www.phoenixbbs.dsl.pipex.com/spybot.html

<snip> I would uninstall it and enable XP's built-in firewall.

Or better still, a real one :-}

 

[Sophie Borodin]

Thank you for your helpful responses. After downloading video driver
and BIOS updates, trying Opera and a few other things to no avail, I
think the problem really is F-Secure. I think what's happening is if
I click on anything with my mouse while F-Secure does its automatic
updates on virus definitions (hourly) it freezes my system. Right now
I just have the automatic updates disabled and I haven't had a freeze
yet.

I'm looking at nod32 and Kaspersky to replace the F-Secure. I'm
leaning toward nod32. It's a drag, because I just paid 70 bucks for
the F-Secure less than a month ago. Oh well.

Thanks,
Sophie

 

[Christopher Muto]

sounds a little better than symantec 2004 which comes with a bug that
requires you to enter the lengthy serial number each time you reboot... they
say they are working on that, but after their lack of taking ownership of
the january 7th system slow down problem with the non-enterprise version of
norton antivirus i am looking elsewhere to renew. why not try trend micro
pc-cillin internet security 2004? they have a free 30 day trial that you
can download and install... and if you like then buy it. and it sells for
$50 and get $25 back with their competitive upgrade rebate.
www.trendmicro.com

 

[Colin Wilson]

(hourly) it freezes my system.n a month ago. Oh well.

Holy crap - an hourly update - surely that must be configurable to
something more reasonable ?

 

[Ray Setzer]

Crikies! I thought it was just me! Where can I find details about this
Norton thing. I distictly that back in Jan, suddenly a number of my PC's
began to preform like they were running undewater. I dumped Norton for
another AV problem dissapeared. However, I sure I have to agree with Norton
that their product could in no way have been responsible.......