the flashlight of death

[Guest]

I have an XP Pro SP2 machine in the shop that is exhibiting problems with
explorer.exe. While it is only a PIII w/128MB ram, when it runs ok, it runs
well for what it is. The problem is that sometimes it hangs at the desktop
when booting - icons are showing, but not everything normally on the systray
appears. I can get into Task Manager and kill/restart explorer, and then it
seems to run normally, unless I try to use Windows Explorer to browse the
\system32 folder. Then I get the flashlight of death - it will sit there
overnight, going back and forth. If I again kill/restart explorer.exe in Task
Manager, it again runs ok.

Thinking there might be something wrong with the files/file structure
pertaining to that folder, I ran chkdsk, but no help. I also removed Avast!
AV 4.7, a trial version of Spysweeper, stopped WIA service, stopped indexing
service and verified that there are no mapped drives.

I did a scan with Hijackthis and used Winternals Autorun and don't see
anything loading that is suspect (removing adware/viruses is something I do
for a living), so let's say for the sake of argument that this is not the
result of an infection.

Anyone else seen this and/or know of things to try?

 

[Malke]

I have an XP Pro SP2 machine in the shop that is exhibiting problems with
explorer.exe. While it is only a PIII w/128MB ram, when it runs ok, it
runs well for what it is. The problem is that sometimes it hangs at the
desktop when booting - icons are showing, but not everything normally on
the systray appears. I can get into Task Manager and kill/restart
explorer, and then it seems to run normally, unless I try to use Windows
Explorer to browse the \system32 folder. Then I get the flashlight of
death - it will sit there overnight, going back and forth. If I again
kill/restart explorer.exe in Task Manager, it again runs ok.

Thinking there might be something wrong with the files/file structure
pertaining to that folder, I ran chkdsk, but no help. I also removed
Avast! AV 4.7, a trial version of Spysweeper, stopped WIA service, stopped
indexing service and verified that there are no mapped drives.

I did a scan with Hijackthis and used Winternals Autorun and don't see
anything loading that is suspect (removing adware/viruses is something I
do for a living), so let's say for the sake of argument that this is not
the result of an infection.

With that old a machine, I'd look more to hardware for the cause. The
symptoms sound like a failing power supply or hard drive.

Malke

 

[Ghostrider]

I have an XP Pro SP2 machine in the shop that is exhibiting problems with
explorer.exe. While it is only a PIII w/128MB ram, when it runs ok, it runs
well for what it is. The problem is that sometimes it hangs at the desktop
when booting - icons are showing, but not everything normally on the systray
appears. I can get into Task Manager and kill/restart explorer, and then it
seems to run normally, unless I try to use Windows Explorer to browse the
\system32 folder. Then I get the flashlight of death - it will sit there
overnight, going back and forth. If I again kill/restart explorer.exe in Task
Manager, it again runs ok.

Thinking there might be something wrong with the files/file structure
pertaining to that folder, I ran chkdsk, but no help. I also removed Avast!
AV 4.7, a trial version of Spysweeper, stopped WIA service, stopped indexing
service and verified that there are no mapped drives.

I did a scan with Hijackthis and used Winternals Autorun and don't see
anything loading that is suspect (removing adware/viruses is something I do
for a living), so let's say for the sake of argument that this is not the
result of an infection.

Anyone else seen this and/or know of things to try?

Time to put the old computer out to pasture. If this is not
a desirable outcome, locate and install more RAM, preferably
up to 384 MB. If the motherboard uses the Intel 440BX chipset
and the voltage regulator has a 1.7V tap, upgrade the PIII CPU
to a PIII Coppermine 800 MHz (there should some surplus units
on eBay or elsewhere. Opt for a faster hard drive and a better
suited OS for this configuration, such as Windows 2000-SP4. But
the cost for most of the preceding usually spells a new system,
the base unit of many OEM products having more than twice the
potential of this old one.