Maximum number of windows shrinks to zero

[James Thomson]

I'm running XP Home edition SP2, with all current updates, on an HP Pavilion
AMD64 laptop, 1.8GHz, 1Gb RAM.

After a period of time which varies from a couple of hours to a couple of
days, Windows refuses to open new windows for any application. This includes
pop-ups, browser windows, right-click menus, etc. If I close one of my
current windows, I can open the new window, but after a while I run into the
same problem again and am forced to close another window. The number of
windows I can open diminishes to the point at which the computer becomes
useless, and I'm forced to reboot.

I'm not using excessive numbers of windows - say eight to twelve, typically.

The computer is four months old, and has been faultless until a week ago. I
haven't installed new software or hardware in the last month. The hard drive
is defragmented regularly.

I've performed a re-installation of Windows, and that hasn't fixed the
problem.

Any ideas gratefully received.

James Thomson

 

[null2006]

It sounds like one or more of the applications you are using has a memory leak.
Using Task Manager and Performance Monitor you should be able to track down what
applications or processes are apparently hogging RAM or CPU cycles.

Because the problem still occurs after reinstalling Windows, you should also
make sure that your applications and hardware drivers have the latest updates
installed.