I hope someone can help me with this as im on the verge of tearing my hair out. I am on a recently re-formatted PC running Windows Xp (service pack 3). My problem is that windows just locks up its programs every few hours. Firstly it starts with Firefox where it refuses to browse the internet (it stays on the: "looking up website" phase of opening a website forever), and then everything becomes incredibly laggy and when i try to access other software on my taskbar, it wont even open the window. The start menu refuses to open too. During which time i do a control alt and delete and the task manager window refuses to display even though i can see the cpu usage % display it has in the quick launcher part of the task bar (near the clock). This then forced me to restart via the main power button. It has happened 6 times today alone and its really making me angry. Any thoughts??? Edit: I've considered it might be a virus, problem is none of my scans are able to finish before everything locks up again.
Don't know but I saw this: "Random failures often indicate hardware problems. Bad RAM, overheating, and defective hard disks, in order, are the most common hardware failures" I've used memtest for RAM check and a soft bristle brush and/or canned air to clean dust. This issue you're having wouldn't explain the reformat, would it?
Actually that makes sense since i recently bought a 1.5 tb Hard drive from Seagate (right when i re-formatted. Huge coincidence eh?). Maybe that could be defective. Any way to confirm for sure? And the reason i re-formatted was program .exe's kept on running in the background whenever i closed the program (e.g, i close Firefox but its process was still running and preventing another window from opening, so i always had to close programs through the task manager).
Maybe a defrag but that's it for me, time for some more knowledgeable member's. If scan's can't complete, sound's like some kind of malware, how about Dr Webs Cureit, it's pretty fast? And then again, that new drive sound's suspicious too, can you remove it to see what happen's?
If you suspect a defective hard drive, I would suggest downloading Seatools diagnostic software from the Seagate web site.
Thanks. Its still running but so far my C drive has failed the test. Any suggestions on cheap but reliable replacements before it dies before being put down (its an internal drive this time)
first I would try partitioning that huge drive into say 4 equal parts and installing windoze on say partition 4 .. get away from the bad sectors. That might buy you enough time to decide that drives over 500 gigs are really not very reliable and risk a massive data loss if they do fail... for speed an os likes to be on a drive realistically no more than 40 gigs.. with a couple of huge ones as pure data storage with partitions limited to 500 gigs max.
The weird thing is that the drive that failed is a 500GB internal drive. Maybe the actual writing area of the disc got scratched or damaged as i was assembling the computer and just never showed any errors until huge data tasks were being performed (all at once data transfers, reformatting, etc). I bought the 1.5 tb external drive to store all my acquired TV shows. If it crashes then its replaceable (just a long process), i just need somewhere to store it The drive that appears to be causing the problem is a samsung drive. Ive tried to contact them a while ago to take back some Wireless headphones under warranty but they slimed away from me. I think i may just contact the store i got it from (Novatech). Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll keep everyone on tabs to see how the replacement and new data management and partitioning techniques will change my situation. If anyone else has any other ideas in the mean time then im wide open.
I had a very similar problem a while back, the computer would lockup every 20 minutes or so. Also my cpu was running at 100 percent with no programs running. I troubleshooted the problem down to the onboard audio. I installed a cheap $10.00 pci audio card and no more lockups or cpu high use problems. I also suspected a possible hard drive problem, but those checked good. That might be another thing for you to check.
Well ive replaced my C drive with a new drive and so far everything seems stable. Thanks for the help everyone. If it comes back again i'll resurrect this thread
