XP Home Locking Up

I have a Sony Vaio laptop that is running XP Home. It had some problems with the USB ports, and now I have a PC MCIA Card with two USB Ports. It has worked beautifully until about 4 days ago. It occasionally locks up, and I have to turn it off. And restart it. Sometimes it is fine for hours, and other times it locks up immediately. I have been both online and off when it locks up, and had different programs running as well. I don't know if a virus is causing this, or I have heard of USB ports drawing to much power or not enough and locking the computer up. Any suggestions. I am getting frustrated, but more importantly my wife is really frustrated.

Please Help!!

 

When you say "lock up" do you mean it will freeze, or stall, or both? Can you boot it into safe mode? Your event logs might give us a clue to what is going on. Have you run the standard virus scans? Have you tried using a Restore Point to a date before the problem? What specific USB problem did you have?

Maybe we can help you get it put right, but we need to know more details so that we don't shoot in the dark. Please post back.

Johanna