Win2K appears to "hang" for 30-45 seconds

[Harry Devine]

I'm having a strange problem that I've never seen before. My Win2K PC
appears to "hang" for approximately 30 -> 45 seconds, then comes back. My
mouse and keyboard stop responding, and my CPU utilization seems to go to
100%. I've run Task Manager and seen Internet Explorer at about 40% and the
System Idle process at 60% around the time of the "hang". When it comes
back, System Idle is back at the normal 98-99%.

I haven't installed anything new in the last week or so, hardware or
software wise (at least, that I can recall). I have rebooted into Safe Mode
and done a complete Defrag and Disk Check, ran SpyBot for spyware, and did a
full antivirus scan using the latest definitions from Symantec. All came
back clean (the Defrag was about 43% and took about 12 hours, but all is
well now).

Are there any viruses or spyware bots around that could be causing this that
my Symantec or Spybot are not detecting? Could my hard drive have issues
and this is the warning that I should be looking for?

Thanks for any assistance on this problem.

Harry

 

[Rick]

I'm having a strange problem that I've never seen before. My Win2K PC
appears to "hang" for approximately 30 -> 45 seconds, then comes back. My
mouse and keyboard stop responding, and my CPU utilization seems to go to
100%. I've run Task Manager and seen Internet Explorer at about 40% and the
System Idle process at 60% around the time of the "hang". When it comes
back, System Idle is back at the normal 98-99%.

I haven't installed anything new in the last week or so, hardware or
software wise (at least, that I can recall). I have rebooted into Safe Mode
and done a complete Defrag and Disk Check, ran SpyBot for spyware, and did a
full antivirus scan using the latest definitions from Symantec. All came
back clean (the Defrag was about 43% and took about 12 hours, but all is
well now).

Are there any viruses or spyware bots around that could be causing this that
my Symantec or Spybot are not detecting? Could my hard drive have issues
and this is the warning that I should be looking for?

Thanks for any assistance on this problem.

There are several possible causes for this.. If Internet Explorer
is going to 40% at the time of the hang, it's likely a third-party
program or utility that's causing it.

First try going into Control Panel/Internet Options/Advanced
and see if "Enable third-party browser extensions" is checked.
If so, uncheck it, hit OK and then reboot.

If the problem doesn't go away, go through your list of
installed software in Add/Remove Programs and see if any
of them are third-party add-ins for Internet Explorer. If so,
uninstall them.

Rick

 

[Harry Devine]

I did everything that you suggested, and even installed Ad-Aware and scanned
and removed Spyware that it found, but the problem still happens. Any other
ideas? It's really difficult to determine via Task Manager what is exactly
running during this "hang" because nothing updates (mouse movements, key
presses, open windows being refreshed, etc).

Thanks for the help.
Harry