XP Pro keeps freezing

[Laughingstar~*]

The past 5 days, my XP Pro will freeze-up for no apparent reason. My cursor
is the first indication that I'll be 'stuck' and have to manually shut my
system down. I have turned off all peripherals.

I am using less than 1/3 of my C Drive capacity (no segmented drives), use
Word 2003, Ad-Aware, Windows Defender is "ON," Avast runs but not in OE, all
updates current.

This happens all the time in Yahoo, and frequently in OE; additionally, it
occurs in Word -- in that regard, my Word has changed formats, so there's a
left vertical window showing the pages, which I do not want, and cannot get
rid of even using MS's instructions.

I've run utilities, Defrag was not needed, and compress my OE daily, and use
OEQB each time. I have noticed that my OE icons on my desktop (to URLs I
often open up) change to simple "E" icons after a few days - may be the
Ad-Aware, i realize.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated...oh, I use adaptive programs,
but only 1-at-a-time - like ZoomText. I do not run large programs in the
background, nor have more than bare min. on Start Up.

Thank you.

 

[Tony]

One thing I did that really stopped WinXP from crashing was a program called RegSeeker.
You can download it from most reputable free download websites. It has a "Clean the
Registry" feature that gets rid of lots of crap that affect performance and crashes
systems.



...

 

[Malke]

One thing I did that really stopped WinXP from crashing was a program
called RegSeeker. You can download it from most reputable free download
websites. It has a "Clean the Registry" feature that gets rid of lots of
crap that affect performance and crashes systems.

This is terrible advice. Registry cleaners are snake oil at best, at worst
they will hose Windows entirely. You may have had luck using RegSeeker but
you were indeed one of the lucky few. The registry does not need cleaning.
There is no "crap" in XP's registry that will affect performance and crash
systems; that sounds good but it isn't how Windows works. Having some extra
entries in the registry doesn't matter.

See here for a full explanation of registry cleaners:

http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099

Malke

 

[Malke]

The past 5 days, my XP Pro will freeze-up for no apparent reason. My
cursor is the first indication that I'll be 'stuck' and have to manually
shut my system down. I have turned off all peripherals.

I am using less than 1/3 of my C Drive capacity (no segmented drives), use
Word 2003, Ad-Aware, Windows Defender is "ON," Avast runs but not in OE,
all updates current.

This happens all the time in Yahoo, and frequently in OE; additionally, it
occurs in Word -- in that regard, my Word has changed formats, so there's
a left vertical window showing the pages, which I do not want, and cannot
get rid of even using MS's instructions.

I've run utilities, Defrag was not needed, and compress my OE daily, and
use OEQB each time. I have noticed that my OE icons on my desktop (to URLs
I often open up) change to simple "E" icons after a few days - may be the
Ad-Aware, i realize.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated...oh, I use adaptive programs,
but only 1-at-a-time - like ZoomText. I do not run large programs in the
background, nor have more than bare min. on Start Up.

Random lockups in various programs are usually caused by bad hardware. Bad
drivers can also be the culprits, but usually it is more directly
hardware-related.

So, The First Question Of Troubleshooting: what changed between the time
things worked and the time they didn't? (Thinking in terms of if you added
any hardware, updated any drivers, that sort of thing.)

If you have made no changes whatsoever in those areas, then it is time to do
hardware troubleshooting:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Standard disclaimer: I can't see and test your computer myself, so these are
just suggestions based on many years of being a professional computer tech;
suggestions based on what you've written. You should not take my
suggestions as a definitive diagnosis. Testing hardware failures often
involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good parts. If you can't
do the testing yourself and/or are uncomfortable opening your computer,
take the machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your local
equivalent of BigComputerStore/GeekSquad). If possible, have all your data
backed up before you take the machine into a shop.

Malke

 

[db.·.. >]

ludicrous, the world
over has been using
registry cleaners
since microsoft
first invented
it.

 

[Laughingstar~*]

Thank you - I usually stay clear of registry stuff ... but wondered if
Defender is causing all of this????

 

[Laughingstar~*]

sheesh ;-))

This is terrible advice. Registry cleaners are snake oil at best, at worst
they will hose Windows entirely. You may have had luck using RegSeeker but
you were indeed one of the lucky few. The registry does not need cleaning.
There is no "crap" in XP's registry that will affect performance and crash
systems; that sounds good but it isn't how Windows works. Having some
extra
entries in the registry doesn't matter.

See here for a full explanation of registry cleaners:

http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

 

[Laughingstar~*]

Hi db

ludicrous, the world
over has been using
registry cleaners
since microsoft
first invented
it.

 

[Laughingstar~*]

yep, I'm blind ..

Random lockups in various programs are usually caused by bad hardware. Bad
drivers can also be the culprits, but usually it is more directly
hardware-related.

So, The First Question Of Troubleshooting: what changed between the time
things worked and the time they didn't? (Thinking in terms of if you added
any hardware, updated any drivers, that sort of thing.)

If you have made no changes whatsoever in those areas, then it is time to
do
hardware troubleshooting:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Standard disclaimer: I can't see and test your computer myself, so these
are
just suggestions based on many years of being a professional computer
tech;
suggestions based on what you've written. You should not take my
suggestions as a definitive diagnosis. Testing hardware failures often
involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good parts. If you can't
do the testing yourself and/or are uncomfortable opening your computer,
take the machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your local
equivalent of BigComputerStore/GeekSquad). If possible, have all your data
backed up before you take the machine into a shop.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

 

[db.·.. >]

hello )

uninstalling defender
wouldn't be a bad
idea.

too many antivirals
can be overkill on
some systems.

 

[Tony]

This is terrible advice. Registry cleaners are snake oil at best, at worst
they will hose Windows entirely. You may have had luck using RegSeeker but
you were indeed one of the lucky few. The registry does not need cleaning.
There is no "crap" in XP's registry that will affect performance and crash
systems; that sounds good but it isn't how Windows works. Having some extra
entries in the registry doesn't matter.

Sorry, but there can be plenty of crap in the registry. There are two cases that are
easy to make, and they are both due to stuff left over by uninstalled programs that had
not been properly uninstalled.

First:
You can have programs that were uninstalled that left crap in the registry. Some of them
are leftover ActiveX controls that are still loaded and still use resources. And some of
these leftover ActiveX controls can cause conflicts that can cause the computer to
become unstable - which possibly was why the program was uninstalled in the first
place - and if the program's designer couldn't even uninstall his program correctly,
it's possible that he couldn't write an ActiveX control properly.

Second:
In most cases, when the registry needs to be accessed, it is accessed directly from
disk. It's easy to understand that the bigger the registry, the longer it takes to
access the desired registry key. Now, of course by this logic it always speeds up the
computer by removing any unneeded entries, but the issue can be one of diminishing
returns - in a 5Meg NTUSER.DAT file, cleaning out a only dozen unloaded entries won't
cause a speedup that is perceptible by any human.

But you might see a noticable effect by cleaning out 100 unused entries - and I have
recently used RegSeeker to clean over 700 entries on an old WinXP machine that has given
the computer new life. BTW, the time difference in accessing the registry is not at the
CPU clock speed (would can be nanoseconds) but milliseconds - and that can really does
add up to seconds when your registry is bloated.

Having said all that, I will admit that most registry cleaners fall into one of two
categories - either they clean too little to be of any use at all (as in Symantec's
WinDoctor) or they clean too damn much and can render some programs unusable (as in
V-COM's RegistryFixer). I feel that RegSeeker is "just right"; however, I have only
cleaned out registry entries marked as "green" (it weighs the danger of removing an
entry as green, yellow, red).

And if you know the history of the system, and if you've never uninstalled any programs,
a registry cleaner won't do much good.

Oh, I almost forgot - if you uninstall Norton AntiVirus, if you run a registry cleaner
and then re-install Norton, your antivirus subscription can be reset (assuming that you
are silly enough to use Norton in the first place).

FYI, I am a hardware design engineer so I tend to see these things from the hardware
standpoint.

Tony

 

[Laughingstar~*]

opps

hello )

uninstalling defender
wouldn't be a bad
idea.

too many antivirals
can be overkill on
some systems.

 

[Gerry]

Malke

Your efforts will not be appreciated:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_...981&as_maxd=6&as_maxm=5&as_maxy=2008&safe=off

--
Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Laughingstar~*]

Say what???

Malke

Your efforts will not be appreciated:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_...981&as_maxd=6&as_maxm=5&as_maxy=2008&safe=off

--
Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[HeyBub]

Sorry, but there can be plenty of crap in the registry. There are two
cases that are easy to make, and they are both due to stuff left over
by uninstalled programs that had not been properly uninstalled.

First:
You can have programs that were uninstalled that left crap in the
registry. Some of them are leftover ActiveX controls that are still
loaded and still use resources. And some of these leftover ActiveX
controls can cause conflicts that can cause the computer to become
unstable - which possibly was why the program was uninstalled in the
first
place - and if the program's designer couldn't even uninstall his
program correctly, it's possible that he couldn't write an ActiveX
control properly.

Nonsense. The registry or its entries don't load anything (with one or two
exceptions). Certainly not anything "left over" from a flawed installation.

Second:
In most cases, when the registry needs to be accessed, it is accessed
directly from disk. It's easy to understand that the bigger the
registry, the longer it takes to access the desired registry key.

Again, patent nonsense. The registry almost never accessed sequentially
(REGEDIT being the only exception I know about). There is virtually no
difference in access time whether the registry has 100 entries or 100
thousand. To claim otherwise is similar to saying it takes much longer to
pull volume "D" of an encyclopedia off the shelf as it does volume "R,"
completely irrespective of how many volumes in the set.

 

[Unknown]

Yep, and look at all the problems they have caused.

 

[Tony]

Nonsense. The registry or its entries don't load anything (with one or two
exceptions). Certainly not anything "left over" from a flawed installation.


Again, patent nonsense. The registry almost never accessed sequentially
(REGEDIT being the only exception I know about). There is virtually no
difference in access time whether the registry has 100 entries or 100
thousand.

Sorry, but from both an engineering and a physics standpoint, you are embarrassingly
wrong.

Sadly, plenty if software designers believe the same thing you do, and assume that they
have unlimited disk space, infinite RAM, instant access time, and that their programs
will run blazingly fast no matter how bloated and inefficient their software is. And no
amount of convincing or customer complaints will change their mind. But actual physical
reality is much, much different from your fantasy. It is a common misconception amongst
lazy software designers that have never had any deep hardware design experience or never
touched a soldering iron.

We have a saying in hardware engineering: "The software must serve the hardware." SW
engineers that think the reverse is true, write what they call "elegant code" that looks
nice in source, but sometimes wastes resources. Powerful code sometimes looks ugly, but
is *efficient*.

Those of us that once programmed in binary know what that means.

To claim otherwise is similar to saying it takes much longer to
pull volume "D" of an encyclopedia off the shelf as it does volume "R,"
completely irrespective of how many volumes in the set.

You are not describing the same type of access and you have been reported to the
Metaphor Police.

Computers don't live in a universe of instant disk access. There is always a delay. The
larger the storage area accessed, the longer it takes.

 

[Unknown]

Strange----from a physics AND engineering point he is correct. It takes no
longer to read from X than it does from Y.
Think of the purpose of the registry and you'll get the picture.

 

[Unknown]

You have a misconception. The larger the storage area accessed the longer it
takes? Could you give an example of that?
Example; accessing track one on a 20 GB HD vs accessing track one on a 500GB
HD. Is that what you're saying?
Does accessing address 1000 in a 2 GB memory take longer than accessing
address 1000 on a 256 meg memory???
You're not making sense.

 

[Bob I]

Nope, once they have RegClean religion, it's pretty much a lost cause.