help windows xp locking up

I am running Windows Xp home edition upgrade... I have had problems with it locking my pc up. You have to hit the restart button to get it restarted. The Keyboard is non functional.. Lately it has been locking up when i try to update my avg virus scan.... It used to lock up when turning on the Music Match Juke box...I have a Dell Demension xps t550 with a proleap 1400 mghz processor upgrade... the pc had a faulty processor when i got it. I was advised that this would be a good replacement processor... Is this a flaw of windows xp upgrade. I usually have to restart the pc until the scan disk finds errors before it will get through the task i am attempting. Once it finds errors it will complete the upgrade in the instance of the lock up when trying to upgrade the virus scan data files. Has anyone else been experienceing anything like this.. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated... Thanks William

 

Can you give a few more system specs, especially memory? Also, have you run Ad-Aware, and/or Spybot, and cleaned out your registry with a Reg Cleaner? RegCleaner can also help you manage what programs are starting up in the background, so needless programs don't steal resources.
Eric

 

Sorry,, I should have included my ram, because that would have been the first thing I would have suspected too... I have 256 MB ram,,,, I have another pc which I have an extra 128 mb chip... which i have installed... The 384 MB didn't make any difference whatsoever. I have went to the msconfig.exe and have turned off all programs except avg, and I have a broadxent modem which requires the bitware software to run to accept a phone call when on line.... I also have a ethernet card in my pc which is linked to my daughters pc...I have disabled internet connectionsharing, which also doesn't seem to make any difference... I found a page that told of several things that I could disable in the run services, which i tried turning off, but didn't seem to have any effect either.. I turned most of them back on now..I have changed a setting in my system properties>advanced>performance>settings>memory usage from adjust best performance of programs to system cache thinking it might allow the windows system to run better,,, but that didn't matter either...My total paging size for all drives is 384... which is default... maximum size is 768 MB.. which is default too. I havn't tried to set to let windows manage which is the default setting for win 98 and win me...

 

Set your pagefile to 576 maximum and minimum. (Multiply your RAM by 1.5 to get pagefile size)
I'm still suspecting spyware. Download Ad Aware if you haven't already done so, and run it. You can get it here. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download506.html Let us know what you come up with.

 

I've reset my page file to 576 minimum and maximum for both harddrives. PC still locking up... I didn't have it set on the d: before. I have recently reinstalled windows. Since the reinstall the pc started locking up when trying to update avg.... before the reinstall it would lock up randomly, usually when opening Music Match Juke Box,,, but not always when using mmjb. The locking up was much more frequent before the reinstall... I have also formated and made a clean reinstall of windows several times, but eventually when I get everything reinstalled it's right back to the locking up thing... I want to point my finger at the OS, or the processor upgrade out running the rest of my pc. I hope it's neither. This is about my last option before removing windows xp and trying win me for a while again... I really like xp the best if in can get the bugs out of it. I have spybot search and destroy and adaware remover installed ... I also have evidence eliminator installed. The last couple of times i've ran spybot and adaware they where clean of spyware and adware. I guess the evidence eliminator is getting rid of them. I've atached a picture of my processor information.

 

You are right about knowing very little about computers. Or at least about the clocking... but to answer your questions. The processor was bad when I got the pc from my boss. I ordered the new processor from powerleap on line. I tried to get one like the original that it came out but couldn't. The cpu is seated correctly to the motherboard, the fan spins . the fan seems to be mounted correctly, it was shipped with a fan right on the cpu in addition to the 1 that cooled the other processor. I wouldn't think that the processor is over heating, because if the first thing i do is go to update avg and it locks up, I thought i'd have to run the pc for a few min for the processor to over heat. Am I wrong about this? But I will check to see if it's hot. My c:is a 13.6GB 7200rpm Western Digital, My d: is a 120GB 7200rpm seagate. My OS is installed on the c: Yes i have ran the online virus scan at trend micro. It found 4 viruses the first time i ran it.. Repaired them and ran it 2 more times since,,, and found no viruses the second 2 times i've ran it.

 

I have a dial up connection. I downloaded the utility and ran it. Hard drive got a clean bill of health. Yes I have installed the windows Updates. And by the way thanks for taking the time to help me with my problem... here is the report results.

 

Maybe post a screen shot of your task manager processes, and see what it looks like when you aren't running anything. Then update AVG, and see what happens in Task Manager. Maybe this will tell us something.

 

Download Reg Cleaner too, run the cleaner, and see what programs are starting up when you reboot. You can get Reg Cleaner here. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download460.html

 

I am going to post a screen shot of my task manager / running applications. I can't give a screen shot of them after i click to run avg updates, because my pc is locked up.. no mouse no ctrl-alt-delete... I can't do anything except hit the restart. I have the windows regcleaner installed and run it when i run Evidence eliminator... But i havn't ran any other regcleaner for a while... I'll download the one you suggested and run it. Thanks,,, William

 

Well I was going to attach the screen shot of the task manager, but can't seem to get capeze going now... I'll definately run the regcleaner...

 

Man, good luck, this must be a frustrating problem. I hope we can get it solved for you.

Eric

 

Got capeze going... I ran regcleaner, i didn't have much software to remove, I did have lots of file extensions that i could remove. One thing i have running is netropa that i forgot to mention ,,, its for my keyboard...

 

Maybe he should go into safe mode? If it locks up in safe mode then we can strongly consider it a hardware problem?

 

Just to be sure i've tried everything before I format and go back to windows me, I'll try the safe mode start up and see if it does anygood. I ran high-jack this but am not sure about the results. Don't know why i need 2 entries for svchost.exe. I'll attach the log file results.

 

Mastertech, Yes I did update adaware, syybot search and destroy, also ran the regcleaner above. I didn't find very any applications or programs that weren't installed. But as i noted I use Evidence eliminator which runs windows regcleaner everytime you run it,,, I hadn't ran it for about a week so I did find one spyware or adware, it was alexa... But after removing it still have the same problem. Also ran the online virus scan at trend micro. It found 2 viruses in 2 places they were joke 32 and joke 32.exe. I'm not so sure that they were destructive, but think they must have had a virus code in them... I got rid of them and have ran the virus scan at trend micro.. 2 times since, and have found no new viruses.... I have gotten a error message every since i've installed XP,when i open windows explorer about every third time i open it. I'll attach it also. I've tried everything i can think of to try to save it. I think I need to format reinstall win ME, and try it for a while, this would tell me if i got a hard ware problem or software problem... I have restore disabled. I have formated 3-4 times and reinstalled XP. But still have the same problems everytime... It may not always lock up when trying to update my data files,, but it always locks up eventually.... If you have anyother Ideas before I throw in the towel, I would appreciate hearing them. I think it's either Windows XP home edition upgrade is substandard software or i have a hardware problem. My son runs xp, but its a full blown edition, he says he don't have many problems at all. But I don't know any other way to tell if its the mainboard or not... I'll try your suggestions and check to see if you have more suggestions,,, One thing is for sure it's not detectable spyware or adware or a virus.. It could be a driver problem,,, I haven't really tried to isolate drivers... maybe that would be the next thing to try. I guess i need to start in safe mode and try the update. It might tell me something. Thanks William

 

Another alternative solution. If you have some very good friend , or relly , how about removing your hard drive and installing it on someone elses computer. Remove their hard drive/s as a precaution so your drive is the only one. If it boots up and runs in theirs then you probably have a hardware problem. Bazza

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Well I've formated and installed windows 98 and so far have not had any problems with lockups... I still have several programs to install to have all what i had before the format.. I am going to try to install a few at a time so if it starts again i may be able to tell which one is causing it... I think it was driver related, but i don't know what more i could have done about that... I had downloaded the latest drivers that where supposed to be compatible with xp. I'll see what happens. now.. thanks to all for trying to help ... William

 

In truth, if your motherboard is not 100% ACPI compliant, you will not have a happy Windows XP experience. You will experience lockups and all sorts of erratic behavior. Don't let the system requirements on the box fool you. Just because it meets them, doesn't mean the motherboard can handle it.

Your system was designed for Windows 9x. If its stable there, I would look into upgrading your hardware (namely your motherboard) if you can't get XP to be stable.

Your other option is to install Windows XP with a standard HAL and use APM, instead of ACPI. Its too late to check now, but I'm almost willing to bet that XP didn't have your BIOS listed on the bad bios list and tried to use ACPI, which I know is not fully supported on that board (I had that exact model).

 

How to Force a Hardware Abstraction Layer During an Upgrade or New Installation of Windows XP

 

Hello again, Adrynalyne your suggestions have give me an idea about what to try on the next install. The link on your post told me how to tell what hal is being installed during the installation. I have looked in the manual that came with the pc, and didn't find out whether the mother board is ACPI compliant or not. I also looked at the paper work that came with the powerleap upgrade processor, and couldn't find out much about what kind of processor it is, or maybe the processor has nothing to do with it. I could see Windows XP installing it's own supposedly correct updated drivers, that might be (close) to the needed driver, or the best they can come up with for now. Mastertech was right about it locking up when updating my virus scan, but that was only lately, in the first few posts I mentioned that it has also locked when trying to start MM jukebox... so it's nothing to do with avg update exclusively. I would really like to resolve this problem, so i could get xp going again... I also mentioned that i get the attached error message about every 3-4 time i open the windows explorer. Is there a way to force xp to continue to use the old drivers, most of the time it installs it's own drivers,without asking if you want to update. If i install windows xp and choose the wrong hal, I suppose i'll find out immediately. I don't know if this old pc is worth upgrading a motherboard on, and I keep thinking i might just get in deeper. I think I also mentioned in an earlier post that I did send the error messages to microsoft the first 4-5 times i got them but never got a reply or help fixing the problem. If it's not the hal, I think it has to be a driver conflict. Especially since lots of my programs were designed to run with win 98 or me. I guess for right now I'll continue installing programs on win 98 until i have them all on. I am about to get there now and have not had a lock up yet. It also crosses my mind that if a different hal was selected, windows might install different drivers, that might be more compatible with my software. Thanks again for (all) the input.... It all is worth considering, I've tried everything I know, so now I hope one of you all can help me... thanks William

 

Hello William,

When you press F5 per the above article, choose whatever standard option you have

There should be only one option that lists Standard in it. It will either says, Standard PC, or Standard PC with C-Step i486.