XP Pro freezes, any ideas?

[Bob - Australia]

Strangely, after apx 2 years of perfect running, my XP Pro is freezing up
like the old 98 did.
Cannot get to task manager to find out the cause. Any ideas anyone? Have all
Windows updates, Vet antivirus, Latest Zonealarm. Thanks in advance.
Bob from down under.

 

[Tester]

So CTRL+ALT+DEL won't let you get to task manager? hmmmm. I don't see
anti-spyware apps listed in your post. I would try free AdAware to scan for
spyware that may be causing an actual freeze or apparent freeze. Also, you
could get to task manager when it's not frozen, minimize so you can see the
CPU usage all the time and see if the usage spikes before and/or during the
freeze. If it has time to update that icon before the freeze.

Also, if you have a burner. go to google and type memtest86

It's a free Linux based memory tester from a bootable CD or your choice of
floppy. I have often see CL3 and CL2.5 ram or other ram get weak in it's
ability to hold data during operations. And causing random issues and
freezes. This will test your ram with increasingly more stressful tests to
see if it has issues. A full scan with all tests can take several hours, but
usually if it hasn't detected the bad ram by test 8, then it's probably not
bad. That is some starting points. Of course if you have added any software
that runs in the background in the past few months, worth checking out as
well.