Windows XP stops responding every now and then

[Dorza]

What i mean is, i might have a program open for example and then all of a sudden the interface becomes un responsive, and then it "un freezes", its the same for every window i open in XP and the XP interface. The only way to get the start button to work is to press the windows key when it happens. the best way to describe it is if you think of all my windows which are open as pictures on the screen rather than usuable GUIs. The freezing is completely random and its only been like this for a week or so. Any ideas as to what it could be? Me thinks its either XP messing up or it could be a memory type problem. thanks for any help

[directhex]

got an up-to-date virus scanner installed & working?

[David_Wales]

if you havent got any anti-virus software running on your computer to scan for virus' you can get a freebie from
www.grisoft.com
look to the keft of the page and choose AVG Free Edition. Scroll down to the bottom of page and click button to save on hardrive. Easy to install and use. Regular updates online and can heal many viruses.

[Dorza]

Thanks for that. Ive noticed that when i end end explorer under the task manager and then restart it windows works fine for a while, untill it stops responding again.

[directhex]

sounds like something with a memory leak is running. run ad-aware & spybot search & destroy

[Steve]

I'm with directhex - explorer has some strange error handling routines and gets very tetchy with memory.

I did away with explorer for Aston shell, much more stable.

However, if a program is memory leaking, shell swapping isn't going to fix the leak.

[Dorza]

Whats memory leaking all about then?

Kez.. whats Aston shell? Got any info on it. I didnt know u could change things like this in windows.

Just run Adaware and AVG (found lots of baddies ). See what happens........







EDIT: Bahh, went again just now. I think i might just give it the ulimate in system cleaning : FORMAT.

[Steve]

www.astonshell.com - sadly it's only shareware, but well worth it IMO. It does require that you're willing to tweak though.



Edit: Memory leaking is where a program doesn't free up memory it no longer needs. Over time it just takes up more and more memory until you get problems (especially as explorer likes to run in certain areas of memory, so I understand.)

[Dorza]

that looks wicked that does. The screen shots on the site are great to. Might try that actualy

[Steve]

Yeah it's pretty cool, I'm waiting for version 2 to come out before I decide whether to buy it or not.