XP Crashes and slow downs

[Guest]

I have recently been having a variety of problems with my laptop. The main
ones are random 'blue screen' crashes and very slow performance. Immediately
after boot up, Task Manager shows explorer taking anything up to 98% of CPU
time.

The only way I have been able to boot up successfully is by launching in
Safe Mode with the DOS prompt. The machine came with XP Home and I upgraded
over a year ago to XP Professional. Some chat groups indicate that there may
be problems with cooling the CPU on this model or with defective RAM. Other
people I have spoken to say that it sounds like a virus (I have Norton
anti-virus which I keep up to date). Has anyone any ideas since my pc is
effectively useless.

Lee Nash

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

To repair all system files, go to the safe mode prompt, and type: SFC /SCANNOW

 

[Guest]

I tried this in Safe Mode but no luck. I got this message “Windows file
protection could not initiate a scan of protected system files the specific
error code is 0X000006A [The RPC Server is unavailable]â€. I have been told
that if I want the RPC server to run I might try Safe Mode with Networking.
Is this the way to go or is there anything else I should try?

 

[omni]

You might want to check if fragmentation may be a reason for the crashes
and slow down as a heavily fragmented drive may lead to such problems.
try running defrag in safe mode and see if it helps. Its important to
defragment regularly to help improve system performance.

 

[Guest]

I de-fragmented the hard drive when I first started having these problems and
before the machine became so unstable. I have tried the using SFC but no
matter which ‘version’ of Safe mode I boot-up in it gives the same error
message concerning the RPC server and will not run. I can't boot-up in
'normal' mode since it continues to hang or just crashes with a blue screen
error. Has anybody got any other ideas?