Mysterious XP freeze --- HELP!

[HE]

P3 notebook, XP Home, a pure vanilla computer with nothing special or
hacked. It's a clean machine, repeatedly scrubbed with updated Norton,
Spybot S&D, Spyware Blaster, Cleaner, etc. etc. No BHOs, no background
mysteries, no unexplained processes. With this situation, we re-did
everything and found nothing unusual..

Here's the problem.

It's working fine and at ordinary speed, and I'm typing in MSWord or Outlook
Express. Then, with no alert or warning, it will suddenly freeze. The
display shows a single-line lateral glitch as though there's a scan error.

Keyboard and mouse become 100% inoperative. Ctrl+alt+del does nothing
whatever. The Standby button won't work. The *only* way to change *anything*
is to force a shutdown with the power key and reboot, which loses
everything. It could have happened while typing this note...

I've removed all external hardware, including USB accessories, and a few
hours later the situation repeated.

Occurs about once daily.

Now, get this... Despite 10GB unused on the hard disk, I CANNOT DO A SYSTEM
RESTORE TO AN EARLIER DATE!!! The computer goes through the ritual, reboots,
then informs me that it was unable...

HELP!!!

Hardware? XP?

Ideas?

Aaargh!

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Failing hard drive. Boot to setup CD, and press "r" for Recovery Console Run
the command :

CHKDSK /R

 

[Guest]

P3 notebook, XP Home, a pure vanilla computer with nothing special or
hacked. It's a clean machine, repeatedly scrubbed with updated Norton,
Spybot S&D, Spyware Blaster, Cleaner, etc. etc. No BHOs, no background
mysteries, no unexplained processes. With this situation, we re-did
everything and found nothing unusual..

Here's the problem.

It's working fine and at ordinary speed, and I'm typing in MSWord or Outlook
Express. Then, with no alert or warning, it will suddenly freeze. The
display shows a single-line lateral glitch as though there's a scan error.

Keyboard and mouse become 100% inoperative. Ctrl+alt+del does nothing
whatever. The Standby button won't work. The *only* way to change *anything*
is to force a shutdown with the power key and reboot, which loses
everything. It could have happened while typing this note...

I've removed all external hardware, including USB accessories, and a few
hours later the situation repeated.

Occurs about once daily.

Now, get this... Despite 10GB unused on the hard disk, I CANNOT DO A SYSTEM
RESTORE TO AN EARLIER DATE!!! The computer goes through the ritual, reboots,
then informs me that it was unable...

HELP!!!

Hardware? XP?

Ideas?

Aaargh!

 

[Guest]

Mark:
I have a similar problem with my MDG computer with Windows XP and pentium 4
controller. About every 8th or 9th turn-on (boot-up), my keyboard becomes
inoperative. After it boots up, I just unplug the keyboard and replug it in
and it's fine. I've had this thing about 1 year now and it was OK till I
installed a bunch of Windows updates per their instuctions which I believe
was the cause of my headaches. Have you ever run across this before? Please
help.
Sam