lock up- intermittant

[jyd]

My wife's machine locks up whenever it wants to;
immediately after reboot, 20 minutes, a day. It was doing
this sometime after (I think) she reinstalled Norton
Antivirus. I do suspect Norton but I'm not sure. She may
have had this problem before reinstallation. Perhaps why
she reinstalled. I asked her to first check for Sasser
and Blaster, etc. I even had a copy of the utility to
clean these, but she was adamant in reformating her Hdd
and doing a fresh install of XP.
Motherboard is a Transcend... Athelon AMD chip. Santa
Cruz sound card, 64 mg video card with Nvida GeForce
mx420 chip.
No evidence of Gator or Xupiter on her machine. She has
checked for new drivers as best as possible.
Once in a while on reboot she gets the message -
checksum error- loading defaults, press F1 to continue.
Warm reboot and she's good to go for another 20 minutes
or another day or so! Cold boot- same thing.
I have dusted and cleaned inside and unplugged and
plugged back in each card and memory stick but left the
cpu alone. I removed the cpu fan and cleaned and dusted
it and the heat sink. Power supply fan in clean and
running. The cpu fan is noisey and needs to be replaced
but it is running. Cpu underneath looked good, no burn
spots or discoloration.
Here's a tip- If your heat sink on the cpu becomes
unsnapped I think it may cause a poor ground- result:
computer starts for about 2 seconds and quits and just
sits there staring at you saying- what did you do to me?
Guess how I found THAT out!
Anyway- wht might I look for? jyd aka Bob

 

[Larry]

Were not sure what "locks up" means. We need more
information. If her norton anti-virus is from a legimate
cd from symantaec, I doubt seriously that its the
problem. You should start task manager to investigate
what running and computer usage. But you may not know
what legitimate and what not legimate

But computer 101 today is virus and spyware removal. You
have the virus scanning covered. Run it.

If you don't have reliable spyware removal, you can get
it with spybot free at :

http://www.net-integration.net/index.php?
page=spybotsd#clean

I suggest you run the spybot scan. It will run awhile.
WHen finished ,clean recommended. Some entries will be in
memory. The program ask if you would like to fix at next
boot up. Reply yes

It has an automatic backup so you can restore fixes.

You'll also need to remove startup registry items also.
Highjackthis is available free at:

http://www.net-integration.net/index.php?

They can help you with interpreting logs. Just follow
their instructions. You can wait for their interpretation
or you can look for 04 startup entries. I suggest you
delete any software startup thats not store bought
software.

 

[larry]

One other thing. If you install norton anti-virus and
thats it, thats not enough. You must open norton anti
virus and run updates. If norton senses that your owed
updates but your not set up to recieve updates, it will
lock your desktop as a safety precaution. This may be the
freeze up your talking about. Run the updates. >-----
Original Message-----

 

[jyd]

Larry- thanks for the help. Her Norton is legit. she
bought it some time ago. She gets regular updates. She
also has Adaware. I showed her how to run the inital
scan... the deep scan. By lock up I mean that desktop
just sits there without mouse or keyboard interaction. It
can happen online as well.Everything just stops... no
mouse, no keyboard just rest button on computer. We use
cable through a router- both of us - the same router.
Whhile cleaning I found an old modem card we had
forgotten. I removed it just in case it was interfering
with the ethernet. I will go get the hijackthis program
and try it. Could it also be a bad memory stick? (sdram)
Also- start up cmos screen always says no 80 pin
connector installed, but she has always had that message
on start up and no OS stall or hang problems. Bob.