T
Tom Steele
This has me baffled. I have a Dell Dimension XPS with
Windows XP Professional. The machine has worked
flawlessly for the past 6 months or so.
Yesterday, I used it fine. I leave it up and running all
the time.
Last night before bed, I decided to check e-mail.
Big problems. You can click on an icon and it appears
that nothing has happened. If you wait a while (10-15
seconds, perhaps longer in some cases) the program will
load. Often times, once running a program, that program
will appear to function perfectly normal. But any time
you access "Windows" the machine "hangs" for long periods
of time.
For example, you have Quicken loaded and it is functioning
normally. But you decided to minimize it and load MSIE to
check something on the web. When you minimize Quicken (a
Windows function, not a "Quicken" function) Quicken
remains on the screen for a while (while = 10-20 seconds
on average) then it will drop down. Clicking on MSIE give
no reaction, until a while later.
CTRL-ALT-DEL does crazy stuff. It will bring up the end
task box, but often does not show everything that is
running. Sometimes, after a "while" it will refresh and
show everything.
Sometimes when rebooting, the computer will bring up a
window that tells me that it is waiting for Explorer.exe
to respond. I can end it now, or wait.
I did a system restore to a couple of days ago with no
change in behavior.
I have tried setting the video to 640x480 and it makes no
difference.
The defining thing that I have seen is that once IN a
program, it appears to function OK. When I need to
use "Windows" for something, the system hangs for 10-20
seconds before doing it. Sometimes it just hangs period.
Does this sound like a known problem. I'm slowly but
surely suspecting that Windows re-install is going to be
necessary, but I'd sure like to avoid that if possible.
One last note, I've run McAfee (and have it running
constantly anyway) and it isn't finding anything but some
exploite byte-verify crap. From what I have read those
aren't the cause.
Ok, another last note. I've tried putting the Cable modem
on standby as well, in case something was jacking the
processor to do something over the internet that I didn't
know about - again, no change in behavior from the
computer.
Thanks for any help!
-Tom Steele
Windows XP Professional. The machine has worked
flawlessly for the past 6 months or so.
Yesterday, I used it fine. I leave it up and running all
the time.
Last night before bed, I decided to check e-mail.
Big problems. You can click on an icon and it appears
that nothing has happened. If you wait a while (10-15
seconds, perhaps longer in some cases) the program will
load. Often times, once running a program, that program
will appear to function perfectly normal. But any time
you access "Windows" the machine "hangs" for long periods
of time.
For example, you have Quicken loaded and it is functioning
normally. But you decided to minimize it and load MSIE to
check something on the web. When you minimize Quicken (a
Windows function, not a "Quicken" function) Quicken
remains on the screen for a while (while = 10-20 seconds
on average) then it will drop down. Clicking on MSIE give
no reaction, until a while later.
CTRL-ALT-DEL does crazy stuff. It will bring up the end
task box, but often does not show everything that is
running. Sometimes, after a "while" it will refresh and
show everything.
Sometimes when rebooting, the computer will bring up a
window that tells me that it is waiting for Explorer.exe
to respond. I can end it now, or wait.
I did a system restore to a couple of days ago with no
change in behavior.
I have tried setting the video to 640x480 and it makes no
difference.
The defining thing that I have seen is that once IN a
program, it appears to function OK. When I need to
use "Windows" for something, the system hangs for 10-20
seconds before doing it. Sometimes it just hangs period.
Does this sound like a known problem. I'm slowly but
surely suspecting that Windows re-install is going to be
necessary, but I'd sure like to avoid that if possible.
One last note, I've run McAfee (and have it running
constantly anyway) and it isn't finding anything but some
exploite byte-verify crap. From what I have read those
aren't the cause.
Ok, another last note. I've tried putting the Cable modem
on standby as well, in case something was jacking the
processor to do something over the internet that I didn't
know about - again, no change in behavior from the
computer.
Thanks for any help!
-Tom Steele