Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Win XP partial freeze while idle, recently starting happening

Dec 7, 2003 7:17PM PST

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

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Re:Win XP partial freeze while idle, recently starting happening
Dec 7, 2003 8:02PM PST
- Collapse -
Re:Win XP partial freeze while idle, recently starting happening
Dec 7, 2003 8:07PM PST

Given such a full machine, and seeing too many of them, you would fit a 400 or more Watt power supply. You could also drop back to 512M of ram and try lower settings of AGP and FSB speeds. A dirty secret is in this Google -> http://www.google.com/search?&q=bad+motherboard+capacitors This may or may not be your issue today. And you will remove the case cover to point a fan at the internals to sniff out if it's a heat issue.

http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6132-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=1313&start=0 lists the scanners and tools to detect parasites and pests your antivirus and firewalls don't deal with.

Bob

- Collapse -
Re:Win XP partial freeze while idle, recently starting happening
Dec 7, 2003 10:44PM PST

Well it seems as though my problems are worse that I hoped. I bought Norton Systemworks 2004 and encountered several I/O errors while installing. Upon reboot, my machine is now locking up at the startup screen or before. I tried running the WinXP disc and using the 'repair Win xP' function and I got into the command prompt. Upon running chkdsk, it now locks up at about 24% and tells me I have some unrecoverable errors on my hard disk.

Maxtor will hear some complaining on this one, that HD is around 6 months old. Now my next issue is, how do I safely recover my important data from that drive?

Kevin

- Collapse -
Systemworks 2004 is not worth the plastic they used to make it.
Dec 7, 2003 11:23PM PST

Well, that's not entirely true, but this software has not been improving since I found a bug in it some years ago at http://www.bugnet.com/alerts/bugalert_010110.html That bug never was resolved by Symantec.

Asking Systemworks to repair XP (in my book) is like asking a blender to not break the yolks.

Given this new ingredient for this toxic stew, I'd consider moving to file saving mode and ask Symantec for a full refund.

Bob

- Collapse -
Re:Systemworks 2004 is not worth the plastic they used to make it.
Dec 8, 2003 1:53AM PST

Yeah, I've accepted defeat and now I'm scrambling to see if I can recover my important stuff. I had nearly 60 GB of home movies that I was editing and putting on DVDs so I would hate to lose that.

On the bright side, Maxtor was very helpful. I called and explained, they are sending me a replacement drive today and I can ship back the broke one within 30 days. Good customer service, what a shock, I'm used to dealing with Nextel and Microsoft.

Oh and yeah, I returned Systemworks this morning and got a full refund, good thing my software store has a liberal return policy.

Thanks for the help,
Kevin