System freezes

[Jim Bunton]

xp media edition fully updated.

Every so often when accessing a directory using Windows Explorer the whole
system freezes. Absolutely nothing works e.g not even right click task bar
to access task manager.

It's always when accessing one particular directory.

Have tried - when not frozen - copy the top directory contents into a new
top directory, then copy it again into another for working on using a
slightly different name for the top directories.

But no joy! I have a suspician that it may be a Corel Draw file. My very old
copy of corel would freeze when I used save as into a directory different to
Corel's default. So installed Corel v 12. All seemed well for months.

Have tried uninstall and really clean out all existing corel system files
then reinstall

No joy!

Scanned for viruses using Pc Guard and Bit Defender - no reports of any
problems.

Any suggestions please!

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Saturday, January 10, 2009 3:34:51 AM, and on a
whim, Jim Bunton pounded out on the keyboard:

xp media edition fully updated.

Every so often when accessing a directory using Windows Explorer the whole
system freezes. Absolutely nothing works e.g not even right click task bar
to access task manager.

It's always when accessing one particular directory.

Have tried - when not frozen - copy the top directory contents into a new
top directory, then copy it again into another for working on using a
slightly different name for the top directories.

But no joy! I have a suspician that it may be a Corel Draw file. My very old
copy of corel would freeze when I used save as into a directory different to
Corel's default. So installed Corel v 12. All seemed well for months.

Have tried uninstall and really clean out all existing corel system files
then reinstall

No joy!

Scanned for viruses using Pc Guard and Bit Defender - no reports of any
problems.

Any suggestions please!

Hi Jim,

Can you navigate to the directory from the command prompt (Start, Run,
type cmd and click OK)? If so, type dir and press Enter to see if the
files will display.

Have you performed a disk check? You may have some corruption. Right
click on My Computer and select Manage. Under Storage click on Disk
Management and on the right side right click on your partition and
select Properties. Click the Tools tab, under Error checking click the
Check Now button. Check both options and click Start. You will get a
dialog that asks if you want to schedule a disk check on restart, click
Yes. Restart Windows and Check Disk will run.

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
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Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

 

[Jim Bunton]

The date and time was Saturday, January 10, 2009 3:34:51 AM, and on a
whim, Jim Bunton pounded out on the keyboard:


Hi Jim,

Can you navigate to the directory from the command prompt (Start, Run,
type cmd and click OK)? If so, type dir and press Enter to see if the
files will display.

Have you performed a disk check? You may have some corruption. Right
click on My Computer and select Manage. Under Storage click on Disk
Management and on the right side right click on your partition and select
Properties. Click the Tools tab, under Error checking click the Check Now
button. Check both options and click Start. You will get a dialog that
asks if you want to schedule a disk check on restart, click Yes. Restart
Windows and Check Disk will run.

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

Hi Terry,
Thanks for your response to my posting and your precise and lucid
suggestions.

Once it's frozen that's it - nothing works - have to do a switch off on the
machine. Simply nothing works!

Tried chkdsk from the command prompt with no arguments when not frozen -
didn't report any faults.

Will try your suggestion to run Check Disc on start up and look at what
arguments are available to beef up the level of checking.

Bit late to do this now so will be tomorrow morning.

Thanks again

Jim Bunton

 

[Jim Bunton]

Hi Terry,
Thanks for your response to my posting and your precise and lucid
suggestions.

Once it's frozen that's it - nothing works - have to do a switch off on
the machine. Simply nothing works!

Tried chkdsk from the command prompt with no arguments when not frozen -
didn't report any faults.

Will try your suggestion to run Check Disc on start up and look at what
arguments are available to beef up the level of checking.

Bit late to do this now so will be tomorrow morning.

Thanks again

Jim Bunton
Hi Terry,

Here we are again!
Chkdsk /R run on D: (Data partition of my main disk)
no errors reported
then, just for good measure
chkdsk /R run on C: the system partion of my main disk.
No errors reported but was a bit surprised when XP carried on to its next
screen as I was leasurely reading through the report [and before I'd really
taken in all the detail - I guess tha "press any key to continue" message
that I was anticipating didn't exist!]

Ah well - I guess it's a wait and see game! I didn't have any freezes fo an
hour or two yesterday! (but before I'd run chkdsk as above)

Thanks again for your reply to my original posting.

Jim Bunton

 

[Jim Bunton]

Hi Terry,
Thanks for your response to my posting and your precise and lucid
suggestions.

Once it's frozen that's it - nothing works - have to do a switch off on
the machine. Simply nothing works!

Tried chkdsk from the command prompt with no arguments when not frozen -
didn't report any faults.

Will try your suggestion to run Check Disc on start up and look at what
arguments are available to beef up the level of checking.

Bit late to do this now so will be tomorrow morning.

Thanks again

Jim Bunton
Hi Terry,

Here we are again!
Chkdsk /R run on D: (Data partition of my main disk)
no errors reported
then, just for good measure
chkdsk /R run on C: the system partion of my main disk.
No errors reported but was a bit surprised when XP carried on to its next
screen as I was leasurely reading through the report [and before I'd really
taken in all the detail - I guess tha "press any key to continue" message
that I was anticipating didn't exist!]

Ah well - I guess it's a wait and see game! I didn't have any freezes fo an
hour or two yesterday! (but before I'd run chkdsk as above)

Thanks again for your reply to my original posting.

Jim Bunton

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Sunday, January 11, 2009 10:58:29 AM, and on a
whim, Jim Bunton pounded out on the keyboard:

Hi Terry,
Thanks for your response to my posting and your precise and lucid
suggestions.

Once it's frozen that's it - nothing works - have to do a switch off on
the machine. Simply nothing works!

Tried chkdsk from the command prompt with no arguments when not frozen -
didn't report any faults.

Will try your suggestion to run Check Disc on start up and look at what
arguments are available to beef up the level of checking.

Bit late to do this now so will be tomorrow morning.

Thanks again

Jim Bunton
Hi Terry,

Here we are again!
Chkdsk /R run on D: (Data partition of my main disk)
no errors reported
then, just for good measure
chkdsk /R run on C: the system partion of my main disk.
No errors reported but was a bit surprised when XP carried on to its next
screen as I was leasurely reading through the report [and before I'd really
taken in all the detail - I guess tha "press any key to continue" message
that I was anticipating didn't exist!]

Ah well - I guess it's a wait and see game! I didn't have any freezes fo an
hour or two yesterday! (but before I'd run chkdsk as above)

Thanks again for your reply to my original posting.

Jim Bunton

You're welcome Jim. Hopefully the "glitch" resolved itself.

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

 

[Jim Bunton]

The date and time was Sunday, January 11, 2009 10:58:29 AM, and on a whim,
Jim Bunton pounded out on the keyboard:

The date and time was Saturday, January 10, 2009 3:34:51 AM, and on a
whim, Jim Bunton pounded out on the keyboard:

xp media edition fully updated.

Every so often when accessing a directory using Windows Explorer the
whole system freezes. Absolutely nothing works e.g not even right
click task bar to access task manager.

It's always when accessing one particular directory.

Have tried - when not frozen - copy the top directory contents into a
new top directory, then copy it again into another for working on
using a slightly different name for the top directories.

But no joy! I have a suspician that it may be a Corel Draw file. My
very old copy of corel would freeze when I used save as into a
directory different to Corel's default. So installed Corel v 12. All
seemed well for months.

Have tried uninstall and really clean out all existing corel system
files then reinstall

No joy!

Scanned for viruses using Pc Guard and Bit Defender - no reports of
any problems.

Any suggestions please!

Hi Jim,

Can you navigate to the directory from the command prompt (Start, Run,
type cmd and click OK)? If so, type dir and press Enter to see if the
files will display.

Have you performed a disk check? You may have some corruption. Right
click on My Computer and select Manage. Under Storage click on Disk
Management and on the right side right click on your partition and
select Properties. Click the Tools tab, under Error checking click the
Check Now button. Check both options and click Start. You will get a
dialog that asks if you want to schedule a disk check on restart, click
Yes. Restart Windows and Check Disk will run.

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
Hi Terry,
Thanks for your response to my posting and your precise and lucid
suggestions.

Once it's frozen that's it - nothing works - have to do a switch off on
the machine. Simply nothing works!

Tried chkdsk from the command prompt with no arguments when not frozen -
didn't report any faults.

Will try your suggestion to run Check Disc on start up and look at what
arguments are available to beef up the level of checking.

Bit late to do this now so will be tomorrow morning.

Thanks again

Jim Bunton
Hi Terry,

Here we are again!
Chkdsk /R run on D: (Data partition of my main disk)
no errors reported
then, just for good measure
chkdsk /R run on C: the system partion of my main disk.
No errors reported but was a bit surprised when XP carried on to its next
screen as I was leasurely reading through the report [and before I'd
really taken in all the detail - I guess tha "press any key to continue"
message that I was anticipating didn't exist!]

Ah well - I guess it's a wait and see game! I didn't have any freezes fo
an hour or two yesterday! (but before I'd run chkdsk as above)

Thanks again for your reply to my original posting.

Jim Bunton

You're welcome Jim. Hopefully the "glitch" resolved itself.

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

Hi Terry,
Thanks again for keeping track of this issue.
Would you believe it!!! The sytem stalled again within a few minutes of my
last posting!

My lastest suspician is that it's related to Update Manager and the firewall
protection.

When the firewall (PC Guard) ran recently a modal window opened asking for
permission to run Update Manager and this seemed to lock just about
everything until the window was closed. It may be that under some
circumstances it's modal window becomes hidden behind other open windows.

For the time being I've set update manager to do as little as possible -
only open manually - and install Shield Update manager entered in the
firewall settings as "Allow". This setting was certainly getting lost when
the system froze as this corrupted the Firewall settings.

I will post again if this theory seems to fall over - as previous ones seem
to have!

Posting it to you now in case it proves helpfull if you meet and try to
assist anyone else experiencing the "Freeze Issue"

Jim Bunton

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Tuesday, January 13, 2009 3:18:41 AM, and on a
whim, Jim Bunton pounded out on the keyboard:

Hi Terry,
Here we are again!
Chkdsk /R run on D: (Data partition of my main disk)
no errors reported
then, just for good measure
chkdsk /R run on C: the system partion of my main disk.
No errors reported but was a bit surprised when XP carried on to its next
screen as I was leasurely reading through the report [and before I'd
really taken in all the detail - I guess tha "press any key to continue"
message that I was anticipating didn't exist!]

Ah well - I guess it's a wait and see game! I didn't have any freezes fo
an hour or two yesterday! (but before I'd run chkdsk as above)

Thanks again for your reply to my original posting.

Jim Bunton

You're welcome Jim. Hopefully the "glitch" resolved itself.

Hi Terry,
Thanks again for keeping track of this issue.
Would you believe it!!! The sytem stalled again within a few minutes of my
last posting!

My lastest suspician is that it's related to Update Manager and the firewall
protection.

When the firewall (PC Guard) ran recently a modal window opened asking for
permission to run Update Manager and this seemed to lock just about
everything until the window was closed. It may be that under some
circumstances it's modal window becomes hidden behind other open windows.

For the time being I've set update manager to do as little as possible -
only open manually - and install Shield Update manager entered in the
firewall settings as "Allow". This setting was certainly getting lost when
the system froze as this corrupted the Firewall settings.

I will post again if this theory seems to fall over - as previous ones seem
to have!

Posting it to you now in case it proves helpfull if you meet and try to
assist anyone else experiencing the "Freeze Issue"

Jim Bunton

Hi Jim,

Maybe you can set the Update Manager to run only when you're not there,
like maybe during the lunch hour or something like that?

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.