Programs lock and won't close

[Jeff Ingman]

-I'm running Win XP Pro on a 3 year old Dell.

Recently I've started to have programs freeze - mostly IE and Word. When
this happens I have to use Task Manager to close the program that is locked
up.

Related - Sometimes I click on a doc file to open it and Word won't even
open. When this happens I usually have to reboot.

I assume I've got a registry setting wrong or a coflict with a program
running in background (I have several). I've run Registry Mechanic. Did not
fix the problem.

Could you suggest a step-by-step process to ID and fix the culprit?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Internet Explorer stops responding, stops working, or restarts:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/pc_ie_intro

The Event Viewer in admin tools might tell you something about the error

Running the command from start /run

SFC /SCANNOW

might fix a file for you.
A Repair setup might bring it back, too.
315341 - How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation or Repair) of
Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341
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Mark L. Ferguson
..

 

[nass]

-I'm running Win XP Pro on a 3 year old Dell.

Recently I've started to have programs freeze - mostly IE and Word. When
this happens I have to use Task Manager to close the program that is locked
up.

Related - Sometimes I click on a doc file to open it and Word won't even
open. When this happens I usually have to reboot.

I assume I've got a registry setting wrong or a coflict with a program
running in background (I have several). I've run Registry Mechanic. Did not
fix the problem.

Could you suggest a step-by-step process to ID and fix the culprit?

Use this tool to see what taken the most usage of the CPU on your machine.
ShellExView v1.19 - Shell Extensions Manager
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

Go through these cleaning steps:
1... Click start >> Control Panel >> Double Click Network and Internet
Connections >> Double click Internet Options, on the IE Properties window
you will see these Options:
General | Security | Privacy | Content | Connections | Programs
| Advanced .

Click on General Tab (1st Tab on the left) and you will see a Button called
[ Clear History ..] click on it to clear your History caches, then click on
[Delete Files..] to delete Internet Files created over the time, click on [
Delete Cookies...] to delete your cookies left by visiting websites.

Then click on Advanced tab and scroll down to under the Browsing Option:
[&] Browsing
[ ] Enable Third-Party browser extensions (Req Rest) uncheck this box.

= Then try to Disable the Add-Ons on your Browser somehow installed on your
browser, On how to disable the Add-ons follow this:
Click on Programs Tab and then click the Manage Add-Ons Button there Disable
the None/Not Verified Plug-ins/Add-ons ( you need to Renable them one-by-one
later and see which is the culprit .
How to manage Add-Ons:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/883256

Scan for malware from here:
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-gb/default.htm?s_cid=sah
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-gb/default.htm

How to speed your PC:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

Run disk clean up and then run this command:
sfc /scannow

HTH.
nass