Two PCs Started "Freezing Up"

[(PeteCresswell)]

I've got two PCs side-by-side and sometime in the last month or
so they've both started acting goofy.

The main symptom seems tb that they cannot be shut down.
Ctl-Alt-Del will not bring up TaskMan, and some applications
cannot be close. Windows pops the "Not Responding..." dialog,
but telling it to close the app now doesn't do anything.

In the end, both PCs have to have the AC power cord pulled for a
cold start.

When the first one started this, I re-imaged it with a known good
system. No luck.

I had been thinking that there was some hardware problem on the
first PC to start acting up... but the second one started and I
had to wonder.

Windows auto-updates are tuned on for both PCs.

Anybody else see this in the past couple months.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was 2/20/2008 4:56 PM, and on a whim, (PeteCresswell)
pounded out on the keyboard:

I've got two PCs side-by-side and sometime in the last month or
so they've both started acting goofy.

The main symptom seems tb that they cannot be shut down.
Ctl-Alt-Del will not bring up TaskMan, and some applications
cannot be close. Windows pops the "Not Responding..." dialog,
but telling it to close the app now doesn't do anything.

In the end, both PCs have to have the AC power cord pulled for a
cold start.

When the first one started this, I re-imaged it with a known good
system. No luck.

I had been thinking that there was some hardware problem on the
first PC to start acting up... but the second one started and I
had to wonder.

Windows auto-updates are tuned on for both PCs.

Anybody else see this in the past couple months.

Hi Pete,

Sounds like the two of them have been infected with some kind of malware
that may be re-infecting the other. Not being able to bring up TaskMan
is a good reason to suspect it.

When you re-imaged the one, did you do it off the network and tested it
thoroughly before re-connecting? And left off any Windows updates since
the image to see if that may be the cause?

--
Terry R.

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[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Terry R.:

Sounds like the two of them have been infected with some kind of malware
that may be re-infecting the other. Not being able to bring up TaskMan
is a good reason to suspect it.

I didn't know that about TaskMan. Relatively bullet proof under
normal (non-infected..>) circumstances, is it?

Maybe I need to get serious about running some malware detection
apps then. I've been just letting Avast do it's thing and not
much else.

The fact that a 15-year-old pounds on both boxes for an hour or
two every day makes your scenario even more attractive.