laptop keeps freezing up

[hilaryfrances]

seeing as we seem to have a lot of technical peeps on here can anyone tell me why my lappy keeps freezing, I have to do a restart to get it going again and it is driving me round the bend,

[SOD'EM]

seeing as we seem to have a lot of technical peeps on here can anyone tell me why my lappy keeps freezing, I have to do a restart to get it going again and it is driving me round the bend,

 

 

 

Just put it in the fridge instead.

[SOD'EM]

No, seriously though. My money would be on a virus. What antivirus software do you use Hills?

[maroondevo52]

It's a banger, no Morphy Richards is it

[maroondevo52]

No, seriously though, what SOD'EM said

[Bookworm]

HF, we're CAGgers, not David bloody Blaine, give us a bit more info!

 

Operating system and version

RAM

internet browser

what AV do you have running?

 

When does the fault occur? Online, typing, doing certain tasks rather than others?

 

Help us help you! ;-)

[hilaryfrances]

sorry, use Norton, Vista. Ram not sure until I get home and look it is a Sony Viao though so I should imagine it is quite a bit, Google.

 

Usually occurs when I am on Ebay or CAg and when I am "scrolling down"

 

I think I have had it around 2.5 years

[SOD'EM]

When it is playing up. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and start Task Manager. If it is a particular program slowing you down, then this will tell you by your CPU usage. I wouldn't rate Norton at all. There are far superior free antivirus software out there. I use Avast Home edition myself and although some may disagree, I would not swap it for anything else at the moment.

Edited October 19, 2009 by SOD'EM

[Bookworm]

no1, get rid of Norton, it's a memory sucker. Get a free AV like Avast.

 

no2, if you're using IE7, there have been known issues caused by some of the ActiveX add-on such as Java, Google tool. I had it when I 1st got this laptop and I'll have to look it up cos I can't remember what I did to sort it, lol.

[Bookworm]

Snap @ Sod'em, lol.

[hilaryfrances]

sorry I am not with you, I appreciate the help, what is my CPU usage? I am thinking of ditching Norton for the free Virgin anti virus software, we down loaded it yesterday onto my OH laptop, I am going to see how it does on there. I will do as you say when I get home.

so can I ask, what is my CPU usage

 

What am I looking out for?

 

And what can I do about it or is it a trip to the poorly lap top shop, (which I cant really afford at the moment!)

[hilaryfrances]

hello bookie, my grandaughters use my laptop a lot, They may have put Java and google tool onto it I will look when I get home, and IE7 ? sorry not with you

[SOD'EM]

CPU (Central Processing Unit), backbone and workhorse of your system. Your CPU usage should be less than 10%, anything over is straining your system. Firefox is a good alternative to Internet Explorer. If it is a virus, then we can deal with that as it comes. But certainly, get rid of Norton. I can't really help much more unless you are at the system. Plenty of excellent techies on CAG. Locotus and dx to name just two.

 

If it is a virus, I will more than likely be able to help get rid of it. As long as it's not as bad as the one I had recently, that was a whopper:mad:

[Bookworm]

IE7 = Internet Explorer 7. It seems your freezing issues happen when you're online from what you describe, so high possibility of being a browser (IE) issue.

[hilaryfrances]

thank you for your help. I will follow instructions when I get home and also get rid of Norton.

[Tezcatlipoca]

As others have said, ditch Norton.

 

Norton, like McAfee, is considered Bloatware, that is to say a piece of software that consumes an excessive amount of system resources (both memory and CPU) in order to perform its tasks. The result of this is that your PC is made slower, sometimes considerably so, and may even become unstable.

 

Either use Avast or the free edition of AVG. I've used both extensively both privately as a systems builder and professionally as a systems administrator, and can recommend both.

You will also want to ensure you have a dependable firewall running (and for 'dependable' read: not Windows' inbuilt one). If you don't use it already, I can recommend you consider either Commodo or ZoneAlarm. Again, both are free and generally better than the paid-for software.

 

A quick word of advice, the choice is yours but I would strongly advise against getting software that acts as both your firewall and anti-virus. There are of course exceptions, but the general rule is that dual software is dedicated to doing one task well, with the other just bolted on. It's preferable to get two bits of software, one for each job. And it should be noted, for example, that the resource footprint of AVG and Zonealarm (free antivirus and free firewall, respectively) running at the same time, is still - on average - less than half of the resource footprint of Norton by itself.

 

With regards to your slowdown, when it happens again, hit Ctrl + Alt + Del and click Task Manager. Click on the Processes tab to get a window like this one:

 

 

The third column along says CPU in the header, and is a realtime reference to what is using your processor at that moment. If you click on this header (the grey button with CPU written on it), the list will be sorted, making it considerably easier to see exactly what is slowing your PC.

 

If at all possible, make a quick note of the process responsible (listed as whatever.exe on the lefthand column) and let us know. That will assist in tracking down the rogue program, if rogue program it be.

For this process, you can ignore the entry that says System Idle Process; it's exactly what it says, and will always have a high CPU usage when other things aren't in full swing.

Edited October 19, 2009 by Tezcatlipoca

[locutus]

Another highly rated free anti-virus and anti-spyware comes from an unusual source.... http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

 

If you press CTRL + ALT + DEL and navigate to the Processes tab as illustrated by Tezcatlipoca, also look at the memory usage. (Click the grey button with "Mem Usage"). Let us know the worst offender in this case.

 

BTW you would normally expect a few more processes running than Tezcatlipoca... he has seriously optimized his system

[hilaryfrances]

I am just going to do the checks now, I was very tired last night so I thought I had better do them after a nights sleep

[hilaryfrances]

Good morning screen is constantly changing, I have done what you said but so a bit difficult to read

apoint ex 204

Isbmgr 276

crssexe 1180

winlog exe 464

leuser 1752

ccsvchst 1936

scan pc 580

task eng exe 760

google desk top 4028k

cdf exe 920

h kcmd exe 8668

 

 

cpu usage fluctuates between 4% and 13%

i explore 56 372

 

physical memory is 77

1 gb of DDR2 SDRAm

Edited October 20, 2009 by hilaryfrances
more info

[Tezcatlipoca]

BTW you would normally expect a few more processes running than Tezcatlipoca... he has seriously optimized his system

 

I'd like to claim credit, but no I haven't. If you look at the image properties you'll see that Tez, rather than doing up an image himself, is just pilfering that one directly from Microsoft's website

 

Good morning screen is constantly changing, I have done what you said but so a bit difficult to read

 

Hmmm...the list you gave isn't hugely helpful I'm afraid, so I'd like a little more information first.

 

If you're not objectionable, could you please download and run SIW (direct download is here).

 

SIW is a free systems information tool. I find it especially handy in my work as it's very small, very light on system resouces, and needs no kind of installation at all, it simply runs straight off a single exe file.

 

Start it up, then please right click on the bold Hardware section, then select Export To and finally TXT, as shown in the screenshot below.

 

 

Incidentally, if you're curious about how much of your private login data is being stored on your PC, try clicking the Secrets option above the Hardware tab; you might be quite surprised!

 

Ok, once you have exported the file, please save it to your desktop or somewhere you can find it.

 

Please attach it to a reply in this thread by using the Attachments option (the paperclip on the top toolbar of the reply window).

 

This will let myself and others take a closer look at the hardware running on your system, which will help us determine whether your problem is more likely to be hardware or software based. I sspect the latter, but it's best to cover all bases.

 

In addition, could you please follow locutus' instructions in the next post so you are able to paste a copy of your processed for us in the thread; we'll be in a much better position to interpret them then.

Edited October 20, 2009 by Tezcatlipoca

[locutus]

This is how I'd display the info...

 

Follow the insturctions Tezcatlipoca gave in post #16

 

Press PrtScn button on keyboard when you have the information in front of you

 

Open paint

 

Press CTRL + V

 

Crop the picture so you have info showing the same as Tezcatlipoca (select the dotted square tool, highlight the bit you want to show, click Edit, select "copy to" then specify a filename to save that bit to as a picture. Upload that file to photobucket )

[Tezcatlipoca]

Just to expand on what locutus has said, when you do this could you please make sure you expand the Task Manager window to show as many, preferably all, of the running processes?

 

If you hover the mouse over the bottom border to the window, it will change to the standard blackarrows symbol which you can use to enlarge the window. Repeat for the top border as well until you have a window that shows as many processes as it can.

 

Essentially, you're trying to eliminate that grey scroll bar on the right of the Task Manager window.

[hilaryfrances]

OK thank you, will do when I get home, now back at work

[Tezcatlipoca]

OK thank you, will do when I get home, now back at work

 

Any update on this, hilaryfrances...?

[hilaryfrances]

I am sorry I did not get back to you but I could not find where the thread had been moved to. I downloaded the software that Tez told me to and my lappy suddenly started to do some self checks and repairs. I dont know if it was connected or a coincidence but fingers crossed I have not had a problem since! The virus is obviously surrendering in the face of CAG help. I will let you know what happens but I really appreciate the help you have given me. Thank you Hils