J
Jeff Hansman
Out of seemingly nowhere, my WinXP Pro SP1 install began acting strangely.
All was well on initial bootup, but after 10 min. or so, the desktop became
progressively unresponsive. At first, right clicking would produce no
shortcut menu, then icons would not respond to clicks of either mouse
button, yet the Start menu would respond, but nothing selected on it would
run. A restart would temporarily fix this situation, but it would inevitably
return.
Finally, out of desparation, I backed up my critical data, fully
reformatted my C: partition, and reinstalled. Then, downloaded and installed
all critical updates, installed Zone Alarm Pro w/ antivirus (updated virus
signatures) and Spybot and just ran my system like that for a day or so,
scanning for virii and spyware (none found, BTW). All seemed well, then sure
enough, the behavior described above returned, with an occasional 'not
enough memory' message, or a memory error when attempting to run an app.
At this point I began to suspect hardware, so I opened my case to make sure
heat was not the issue, with no joy; I swapped memory modules in hopes that
I had a bad one; again, no joy. Pulled my CPU, cleaned it an my cooler and
reapplied thermal paste and reseated them. No luck.
Now, here's the good part (thanks for sticking with me this long): all this
time, my wife's profile ran *flawlessly*. I didn't pay any attention to
this, as I was so absorbed in my own logon problems. So, just for the hell
of it, I deleted my profile, then re-created it. It's been 48 hours now, and
so far so good. I guess I should just be happy and leave it at that, but
being a home-built computer hobbyist, I want to know what the hell happened.
So, my question is (finally!), can a logon/profile somehow become corrupted
in a way that makes it unstable as above, while other profiles remain
stable? I've been using XP since the beta days, and have never seen this
behavior. FWIW, my hardware:
Asus A7N8X, rev. 2 (no overclocking, running stock voltages & memory
timings)
Athlon XP 2600 w/ Vantec Aeroflow cooler & Arctic Silver 3 paste
512 MB PC2700 (Crucial)
Chaintech FX5700 video card (256 MB)
Antec case w/ 300W PSU.
etc.
Now, I know many of you will jump on the PSU as being the culprit here, and
normally I would agree, except how do you explain the fact that the
anomalies only occured on my logon? Frankly, I am stumped, and any help
would be much appreciated. Sorry for such a long post, but I felt I had to
put all this down, and Usenet is where I find the most knowledgable users.
TIA!
All was well on initial bootup, but after 10 min. or so, the desktop became
progressively unresponsive. At first, right clicking would produce no
shortcut menu, then icons would not respond to clicks of either mouse
button, yet the Start menu would respond, but nothing selected on it would
run. A restart would temporarily fix this situation, but it would inevitably
return.
Finally, out of desparation, I backed up my critical data, fully
reformatted my C: partition, and reinstalled. Then, downloaded and installed
all critical updates, installed Zone Alarm Pro w/ antivirus (updated virus
signatures) and Spybot and just ran my system like that for a day or so,
scanning for virii and spyware (none found, BTW). All seemed well, then sure
enough, the behavior described above returned, with an occasional 'not
enough memory' message, or a memory error when attempting to run an app.
At this point I began to suspect hardware, so I opened my case to make sure
heat was not the issue, with no joy; I swapped memory modules in hopes that
I had a bad one; again, no joy. Pulled my CPU, cleaned it an my cooler and
reapplied thermal paste and reseated them. No luck.
Now, here's the good part (thanks for sticking with me this long): all this
time, my wife's profile ran *flawlessly*. I didn't pay any attention to
this, as I was so absorbed in my own logon problems. So, just for the hell
of it, I deleted my profile, then re-created it. It's been 48 hours now, and
so far so good. I guess I should just be happy and leave it at that, but
being a home-built computer hobbyist, I want to know what the hell happened.
So, my question is (finally!), can a logon/profile somehow become corrupted
in a way that makes it unstable as above, while other profiles remain
stable? I've been using XP since the beta days, and have never seen this
behavior. FWIW, my hardware:
Asus A7N8X, rev. 2 (no overclocking, running stock voltages & memory
timings)
Athlon XP 2600 w/ Vantec Aeroflow cooler & Arctic Silver 3 paste
512 MB PC2700 (Crucial)
Chaintech FX5700 video card (256 MB)
Antec case w/ 300W PSU.
etc.
Now, I know many of you will jump on the PSU as being the culprit here, and
normally I would agree, except how do you explain the fact that the
anomalies only occured on my logon? Frankly, I am stumped, and any help
would be much appreciated. Sorry for such a long post, but I felt I had to
put all this down, and Usenet is where I find the most knowledgable users.
TIA!