Windows XP Crappy Advent PC not responding very well!!!

[Graham_Comtek]

Hi all,

I am working on an Advent 151422 space saving all in one jobby! The problem i am having is after a while, usually when i haven't touched it for maybe an hour or so the machine becomes unresponsive! By that what i mean is i can still move the mouse all over the screen but i can't click on certain things, most of the time it only affects the start bar, i can double click on desktop icons. Another strange thing it does it give me the drop down menu when i left click aswell as right click! I have tried a wired mouse on the machine as i thought it might have something to do with the bluetooth one that was originally being used, that hasn't made any difference. I can get it working correctly again but only if i press ctrl + alt + del and then esc out of the task manager menu, after that everything returns back to normal!

Any Ideas what might be causing this?

Thanks

Graham

 

[Ian]

Is this on a fresh install? It sounds like there is some application in the background that is bogging the system down - does it do the same in safe mode?

 

[SlimJim]

I agree with Ian about the background application. Try the following. Right click the taskbar and run task Manager when you first start, go to the Processes Tab and click the CPU column twice. This brings the heavy use processes to the top of the list (most likely System Idle Process) now run Task Manager minimized and continue with your work. In the system tray you will see a dark green box which represents CPU usage. If that starts to fill with light green then something is heavily using the CPU. Restore the Task manager to the desktop and you will immediately see the heavy users at the top of the list. This may (or may not) help

 

[Graham_Comtek]

Is this on a fresh install? It sounds like there is some application in the background that is bogging the system down - does it do the same in safe mode?

This is on a new install. I used the Advent recovery media to do it. It was having this problem before the reinstall too!?!

I have task manager open at the mo but sod's law, the PC is running fine at the mo! A mixture of the system idle process, taskmanager.exe and svchost.exe are the only things using the CPU really...

I am at a bit of a loose end witht his one...

 

[Ian]

Very strange if it's happening on a fresh install. Do you notice any processes using up lots of CPU power or memory when it starts to run slow?

 

[Graham_Comtek]

Very strange if it's happening on a fresh install. Do you notice any processes using up lots of CPU power or memory when it starts to run slow?

I have only just started to monitor the task manager recently and since i have been doing that it has been running ok, so as of yet, nothing is out of the ordinary!

 

[Graham_Comtek]

It has just locked up on me now... I can't select anything on the taskbar, and i double clicked on the Microsoft Word icon on the desktop, the programme has opened up but it is now locked on the screen! I can't open up the minimised task manager icon either, i xcan move the mouse but i can't select anything at all now???

 

[Ian]

It could be that explorer.exe has crashed - can you try ending that task and see if it kicks back to life after a few seconds?

 

[Graham_Comtek]

It could be that explorer.exe has crashed - can you try ending that task and see if it kicks back to life after a few seconds?

Ok i ended the explorer.exe process... waited for about 1 minute or so, it isn't coming back up by itself... I could probs get it back up by manually starting the process?

 

[Graham_Comtek]

When i manually start the explorer.exe service it starts working fine again!

 

[Ian]

Very strange. Have you fully patched XP to the latest version?

It might be worth leaving taskmanager open, and then sorted by CPU or Memory. Then you should still be able to see if anything was using up all of the resources when it hangs.

 

[Graham_Comtek]

Very strange. Have you fully patched XP to the latest version?

It might be worth leaving taskmanager open, and then sorted by CPU or Memory. Then you should still be able to see if anything was using up all of the resources when it hangs.

The XP is bang up to date. I will leave task manager open and see if it hangs, yesterday it didn't hang until sometime after i minimised task manager though. We shall see what happens this time!

 

[Graham_Comtek]

It doesn't seem to want to crash while i have task manager open? One thing i have noticed this morning however is that there was another service using the CPU, ccSvcHst.exe, i think this has something to do with Norton 360?

Thanks

 

[Ian]

Ah... Norton! I'd be tempted to say ditch it, but I'm sure I heard someone on here say Norton 360 was actually not too bad - so maybe it's improved since I last used it.

It does appear there are lots of complaints about that ccSvcHst.exe file using up 100% of the CPU when Norton updates:

http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/problems-with-ccsvchstexe/167291.html

Perhaps try disabling Norton for a while and then see if it happens again.

 

[SlimJim]

There is the following description of CCSVCHST.EXE on the PrevX site which is a bit puzzling. Perhaps there are two versions going round.

 

[Graham_Comtek]

It has jsut frozen again, the system idle process is using 99% of the cpu though...

 

[Graham_Comtek]

The only way i can get it to respond again is by pressing ctrl+alt+del... This has me pretty stumped at the mo...