Periodic freeze ups

[Chris]

My laptop recently started freezing for periods of 10 seconds or so. I'll be
working along, press a button, and the app I'm working on becomes
unresponsive. The mouse still functions, but none of the apps I have open
will do anything. I think it usually happens in response to a request for
something off the disk, but I'm not sure. It happens across multiple apps.

This only started happening a week or two ago -- before that, everything
worked fine. It must have been something I installed.

Any clue where I should start looking?

System details:
Compaq Presario 2175US notebook
XP with SP2, fully up to date with Windows Update.
1 Gb RAM
No recent hardware changes.

 

[M and D]

Start looking for viruses and spyware.

Steven

 

[Andereida]

My laptop recently started freezing for periods of 10 seconds or so. I'll be
working along, press a button, and the app I'm working on becomes
unresponsive. The mouse still functions, but none of the apps I have open
will do anything. I think it usually happens in response to a request for
something off the disk, but I'm not sure. It happens across multiple apps.

This only started happening a week or two ago -- before that, everything
worked fine. It must have been something I installed.

Any clue where I should start looking?

System details:
Compaq Presario 2175US notebook
XP with SP2, fully up to date with Windows Update.
1 Gb RAM
No recent hardware changes.

Have you recently installed Adobe Photoshop Elements 3? If so, there may
possibly be an issue with two processes it installs in background and I
suggest checking in the Adobe Elements forum FAQ for details. If not
then I can't help, sorry. Disabling these did, however, clear similar
problems that I was experiencing.

Andereida