Computer (Not Responding)

[Guest]

Perhaps somebody can help me here. PLEASE!! Over the last couple of months my
computer keeps hanging up and the prompt on the top of the screen says (Not
Responding). I have searched the threads in here but they all seem to be
narrowed down to one particular program or time when theirs doesn't repsond.
Mine does it on all programs, AOL, My Documents, etc. I have done a scandisk
and a defrag. I have 4 different spyware programs and McAfee and they never
show anything major. I have a Sony VGC-RA710G with MCE 2005 and 1GB of RAM
with a 250 GB hard drive. The hard drive is barely half full, if that. I have
tried to use Registry Mechanic, but I have learned the hard way that this
program does not get along well with MCE. So I am not sure if my registry
could be the problem. It seems as though the computer gets backed up easily
and never catches up. For example, whenever I close out of or minimize AOL,
my entire desktop completely refreshes like I just turned the computer on.
Even if I close out of a website on AOL, the AOL toolbar needs to refesh
itself. The RAM used rarely goes above 600. Is this a common problem? I
upgraded with Kingston RAM boards and I know they aren't the best. If I wait
a LONG time, the (Not Responding) prompt goes away and the computer catches
up, but lots of times it takes so long I need to do a Ctrl-Alt-Del to quit
the program. However, the desktop always refreshes itself like there is not
enough RAM and it cannot keep the desktop in memory while I am doing other
things. I have a feeling this is not the problem though, that would be too
easy, lol. Has anyone experienced this, and if so, how was it resolved? Any
help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Ted Zieglar]

"I have 4 different spyware programs and McAfee and they never show anything
major."

They should never show anything, period.

 

[Guest]

I experience the same problem on my Gateway 320 GM. Similar H/W & S/W
features and has been very annoying. Sometimes even the freakin' Task
Manager hangs sometimes while trying to end the one process that started the
whole mess!

I've tried, like you, several clean up tools like WinTools.net, Spybot,
Stinger, etc to find out what causes it but to no avail. I'll be sure to
keep an eye on the advice we get.

 

[-Karl]

Maybe you actually have an unstable system. Don't be so quick to jump
to 1 conclusion just because it's the latest issue out there. You need
to actually look past the end of your noses and dig into your PC's a
bit more. Always start with the event logs. Disable unneeded startup
applications. Uninstall software that you don't use or are 'demos',
'freeware' etc. Ceck your hardware for newer drivers. Scan your HD
for errors / defrag with a 3rd party util that actually can do a proper
defrag.

Check your memory. Perform performance testing and look at the results
after a few days to see the bottlenecks

This is all very basic stuff and there are other things that you might
do that I haven't listed here. Remember, this is M$, so it's not
perfect!

Worst case, format & Reinstall.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the inputs, Karl. Unfortunately, some of your suggestions go much
further than my expertise. I've heard of event logs but even if I could
initiate one, I would have to know which one to initiate and then interpret
it. I've disabled startup apps from suggestions in a WinXp Tech magazine,
and have downloaded the latest drivers off the M$ website.

I have no trial S/W that I know of/remember installing. I guess I could
unload all the cool game apps (that I don't use) but still have on disc.
Scanned & defragged & cleaned and scrubbed and defragged again. Can you
recommend a better defrag tool? I signed up for PC Pitstop that seemed to
work wonders but saw not much difference between it & WinTools.net and other
utilities already installed.

Perhaps we need a few solid recommendations for the "basic stuff" that is as
instructional as well as functional and reliable without becoming obsolete
after the first operation.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Guest]

I have done quite of few of these suggestions. My startup hasn't changed any
in quite some time and this problem has been more recent. I normally have
around 60 processes running at one time, most are small and required since I
have a few spyware programs on mine. Others are related to either Sony or MCE
2005 that I am not quite sure what they do, but have been told thatif you are
unsure, you should just leave them alone. I did however do a defrag using
windows, but I have System Mechanic 5 which has a defrag on it. I may try
that. This problem only seems to happen when I multitask and not when I run a
high powered program by itself. Which is what led me to believe it might be
poor quality RAM boards. I have way too much on this computer to do a clean
format and install on it, I have done it before and it's more trouble than it
is worth. I can see if this was a low end computer having these problems.
But, half the reason I bought a high end computer was so that I wouldn't have
to constantly clean up, delete programs and squeeze every little bit of extra
space I can to make it run properly. I should be able to log into AOL and
open My Documents at the same time without the computer being backed up and
not responding. Karl, thanks for the tips. I'll check for newer drivers and
check my event logs to see if I can come with something. I'll post any event
errors that I think may be unusual. Thans again for the responses.

 

[-Karl]

Unstable system due to a corrupt driver / registry / hardware can be
the most difficult to troubleshoot and even after doing everything
possible to find the cause, you may not find the reason. For instance,
I & my colleques at work are pulling out our hairs on our laptops (Dell
Lattitudes D610. We are all suddenly having BSOD with the
Driver_irq_not_equal_or_less_than issue. With the 4 of us working on
several angles (Drivers being the 1st thing we are looking into), we
have yet to uncover the cause. And this is the standard laptop we are
putting on the floors. Luckily, no one else has experienced the issue
just yet so that is a big relief.

So don't feel bad, even the best techs outside of MS sometimes have
issues they can't resolve In that case, reformat & image the new OS
using a imaging app like Ghost or LiveState imaging (Both from
Symantec)
I like Livestate better since it somehow makes an image within Windows!
No kidding!!!! and it does incremental images afterwards so you don't
have to keep making the huge images each time

 

[D.Currie]

There's a spyware program called wintools. Are you sure the one you have is
legit? And please note that there are plenty of programs that pretend to get
rid of spyware but that are actually infested with spyware themselves.

 

[Guest]

Please run an Antivirus program, I had the same problem and fixed it.

 

[Guest]

The anti-virus I run is McAfee. As far as spyware programs, I use Trend
Micro, Lavasoft, Spybot, Windows Antispyware, as well as the System Mechanics
5 program. One thing I forgot about is that quite often lately I have gotten
C++ Runtime Errors within aolload.exe. I just did a fresh install of Direct X
9.0c and I'll see how that works and let you know. Whether this has anything
to do with the problem I don't know. I reinstalled AOL a couple of weeks ago
and got these errors before and after the install. So far so good, but I've
been busy all weekend, so I haven't computed much.

 

[Guest]

Brentromero, try doing a fresh install of DirectX 9.0c. So far my comp has
been running smoothly (knocking on wood), and haven't had a problem so far.
It's only been a couple of days, but it hasn't gone this long without
problems for quite a while. I did look up errors on my event log, but nothing
major. Only ones that seemed to pop up is a Media Center errors about a
corrupted recording, and a system error about an Nvidia ISO control driver
error. The media center recording error I think are recordings that cannot be
recorded onto a DVD.

 

[Guest]

Unstable system due to a corrupt driver / registry / hardware can be
the most difficult to troubleshoot and even after doing everything
possible to find the cause, you may not find the reason. For instance,
I & my colleques at work are pulling out our hairs on our laptops (Dell
Lattitudes D610. We are all suddenly having BSOD with the
Driver_irq_not_equal_or_less_than issue. With the 4 of us working on
several angles (Drivers being the 1st thing we are looking into), we
have yet to uncover the cause. And this is the standard laptop we are
putting on the floors. Luckily, no one else has experienced the issue
just yet so that is a big relief.

So don't feel bad, even the best techs outside of MS sometimes have
issues they can't resolve In that case, reformat & image the new OS
using a imaging app like Ghost or LiveState imaging (Both from
Symantec)
I like Livestate better since it somehow makes an image within Windows!
No kidding!!!! and it does incremental images afterwards so you don't
have to keep making the huge images each time

 

[Guest]

I think I solved the "BSOD with the

Driver_irq_not_equal_or_less_than issue"on a Dell by flashing the bios. I say think because I thought I had solved the issue by updating NIC drivers only to have it reappear. It has been 3 days now with no BSOD episodes.