You said you've run Virus scan but did you run scans for parasite/worms?
You should run all these tests and see if your PC comes up clean:
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6132-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=1313&start=0
Did you set the Power Options to always on for HDD and make sure Hibernation or Standby are off?
Is Kazaa or Limewire installed on your PC?
I've always prided myself in using my experience and the good old internet to fix my PC problems in the past, but this one has caused hair loss for a week now:
I have had XP running fine for months now with no major problems. About a week ago, it started freezing up while my system was idle. There doesn't seem to be a method to the madness, the timing is always different, but 90% of the time it happens after it's been idle for about 10 minutes. But here's the kicker, it's not a total freeze-up, my mouse pointer will still move, I just can't start or stop any processes. If I press a key and wait about 3-5 minutes, it will 'wake up' and work as if nothing happened. It's almost as if it is going into some type of hibernation on it's own and is slow to wake up. This is driving me nuts because it freezes all the processes, so if I leave something downloading, that process freezes as well and when I come back, I find that 3 hours of downloading has yielded 10 minutes worth of files. VERY frustrating when downloading a 400 mb demo.
My list of tried (and failed) solutions:
-Virus scan
-All driver updates
-Some driver rollbacks
-Disabling power management / screen savers
-Stopping all background programs
-Restoring WinXP (Sys Restore) to a previous date when I knew it was still fine
-Installed all critical XP updates
-Ran ram check, registry cleaner, chkdsk, & defragmenter (see notes below)
-Cursed and threatened to bludgen Bill Gates with a rusty spoon if ever given the opportunity
One note that I should make is this:
This is probably a bad omen but when I ran chkdsk and disk defragmenter, I encounted full lockups during the processes. I hope this is not an impending hd failure because it's the newest component in my machine (6 months old). I tend to believe that this is not the cause because I would expect failures when my hd is most active (games, internet surfing, downloading while not idle, etc), none of which is occurring.
Any help would be appreciated,
Kevin
My specs:
WinXP Service Pack 1
AMD 1100 mhz
1.0 GB ram
ASUS A7V with current drivers
Radeon 8500 with current drivers
HD 1: Maxtor 160 GB 7200 RPM
HD 2: Maxtor 30 GB 7200 RPM
Sound Blaster Live VAlue
Pioneer A06 DVD Writer
Creative 52x Cd-drive
Iomega Backpack CDRW drive

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