Machine locked after startup

Hi:

This is the second or third time this has happened in the last couple of months: after startup (cold boot this morning), the pointer moves but clicking or double-clicking is unresponsive, and the keyboard is also unresponsive. Ctrl-Alt-Del also doesn't do anything either. After shutting down by holding the power switch in for several seconds and cold booting again, things are okay. I'm running XP Home Edition.

I don't know if this is a hardware or software problem but I'm posting in this forum... The machine is about four years old but up-to-date with antivirus and anti spy-ware. I'm a little nervous about my hard drive.

Please advise.

Thanks for your attention!

 

Welcome to the BBS,

Run Error Checking on your harddrive. Right-click on the drive(s) in My Computer, select Properties and Tools (tab). Set to automatically fix errors and a full surface scan (it may take several hours).

There may be a bug in the drivers. Look at reinstalling them from the drivers disks, starting with motherboard/chipset drivers and then the graphics/video drivers, then the other drivers. It would be best to find updated drivers at the manufacturer's website. You can use Everest and Sandra in my signature to help identify hardware. If you find it gets repetitive, disconnect any hardware like printers, etc and see if you can identify the source that way.

If there seems to be further problems that may relate to the HDD, find the manufacturer's utilities and run those. Of course, have your data backed up whether it is a disk problem or not.

Matt
Edit: another thing to check is that there is a sufficient amount of RAM. If there isn't you will notice a lot of disk activity when you reach the desktop and also when you start opening programs. Check the level of available memory in Task Manager when you reach the desktop and reducing the number of background programs loading at boot-up.
Edit 2: Check if it may be an aggressive antivirus. Try disabling the antivirus from running at startup.

 

I suppose I should add that, say, once a month is not a large amount, considering the amount of functions that happen at startup and what you may have to investigate to find the source (see above). If you installed Windows without any other (third party) programs, it will start perfectly every time. Once you add all the other factors....

You should expect the occasional reboot, sometimes the "plan" does not work in practice. Watch the startup carefully though, you may be able to pinpoint where it happens (example, watch the icons appearing the system tray...and...if they relate to hardware it may be the drivers).

Once or twice a month, I could live with that. Some of my third party programs are a lot less stable than that (although they are great programs otherwise).

Matt

 

Please excuse my delay in responding. It did it twice in succession on Saturday. Thanks for your feedback--I'll check out driver updates.

 

I checked the BIOS first and the update said that it fixed a booting problem with the 2GHz processor, so I installed it and I'll leave it at that for now and see what happens. Thanks again!

 

It did it again: I had to boot a second time.

This morning not only were the mouse & keyboard not working but a couple of files on the desktop had the generic Windows icon, like it didn't know what apps they were associated with (I think they may have been Word documents... like Windows didn't recognize Word?!).

I'll pursue other driver updates per your recommendation. If the icon symptom suggests another source of the problem of course I'd be glad to hear about it.

I just reviewed your posts: I've been running Norton AntiVirus, so I guess I'll disable it loading at startup and try that first.

 

This problem has been happenning to me, only every time I switch my computer on!

It loads up normally and then there's nothing I can do to it after about 1 or two minutes. When I try to do a scan, it will start fine as it normally does if i start it straight away, but it's freezes and doesnt do anything then about 5% of the way through it.. again, as per usual

. It freezes with anything I do after a short while... I'm not connected to the internet with that system at the moment and I've recently had my drive reformatted after it went haywire....?? Any suggestions?

 

No luck and if it still seems to be a possible cause, try uninstalling NAV (don't connect to the internet or put your system at risk when you are testing).

My battles with NAV have been from disabling it at startup to a full format and reinstall of Windows (not using Win XP though).

Matt

 

It booted okay this morning with NAV startup disabled, so based on a huge statistical population of one, it must have been NAV. )

A couple of items: when I looked at the NAV Auto-Protect Options just now, the "Start Auto-Protect when Windows starts up" box was checked again. So it apparently "auto-enabled" after I turned it on manually this a.m.?

Also, do I need to be disconnected from the internet from the time I boot to when I turn Auto-Protect back on manually, assuming that is what I do first thing? That seems like it might be a little excessive/obsessive (I've got broad-band, so I'm always connected).

A note about Norton/Symantec: I'm not happy with the calisthenics that I've have to go through to get Ghost (v10) to do a clean backup without errors. I don't know if I can trust it to do a recovery of my hard drive should I need it - I've got some older programs for which I can no longer download updates.

 

I would let everything load, so if you watch the harddrive LED and activity finishes, then enable NAV ( "auto-enable" ), I would not start your email program or a messenger program without the antivirus. The browser is low risk so if you start it and go to your homepage before the antivirus, there should be no problem.

I am on my second version of Ghost, because I like it's cloning ability. I used it for backing up at first, then when my system failed, I tried reinstalling the backup. I got the message that the backup was corrupt...oh great!! Luckily I had another backup by Drive Copy (although I copy all my data to CD separately as well). I no longer use Ghost for backing up, I don't trust it either. My suggestion if you wanted to use Ghost would be just to clone your drive to another (and replace the current drive as a test). It may seem like you are doubling the amount of HDD space, but HDD storage is the most economical.

Matt