Laptop grinds to a halt...

Hey all...I am running Windows XP SP2 on an IBM T60. This is my work computer, so of course am very, very limited to what I can do as far as program removal, installations, etc. Anywho, to the point of my post. Frequently (as in three or four times a week) my laptop will grind to a halt, where the IO light is constantly on and it can take up to 12 minutes to open task manager. When I do finally get Task Manager open, I typically see the same thing - System Idle Process- 93%, TaskMgr.exe-2%, and HIPS.exe (McAfee's Host Intrusion Protection) - 2%. That's it. Occassionally I'll see one of the three scans running, and those combined take up about 10-15%, but they don't stay there for long. The slow down is constant, and not always when these scans are going.

So two questions - a) where's the other (on average) 3%, and b) how do i find out what processes are chewing that up? I'm a SQL Database admin and having my laptop slow down like that if I'm in a meeting or working on an outage is extremely embarassing and frustrating. Right now, everything is running just beautifully; when I check task Manager, everything adds up to 100%. Very strange.

Any ideas would be appreciated.....
Thanks
Chris

 

Hi Darth'


What specs has your lappy got? (CPU, RAM, etc.)


******************

Ther is many possible causes for such activity, including the fact that XP does occasionally just wind itself into a stoop, and nothing short of a restart gets it going properly.


Have you tested to see if it is overheating?

Do you defrag and clear out old entries etc. often?

McAfee could be the culprit, it has been known to cause slowdowns, to test this just Disable it completely, and use or leave the laptop running for a while.
(make sure your not connected to the internet when you do).


Also, do you have a particular reason not ot have SP3 installed?


Q

 

Hey ~Q~ - Thanks for the reply!

I have 1 Gb of RAM, 8.79 Gb of free space, I defrag regularly (ie., at least once a week, sometimes as many as three depending on what i'm working on).

As far as overheating, interesting - never thought of that. How would I know if it is? I can feel the fan going, and sometimes it's *really* hot (hot enough that if I have my Sigg bottle near it, it's actually warm).

I've suspected McAfee, but thought if it wasn't using CPU then it couldn't be contributing. I'll test that theory though this weekend.

Don't have SP3 cuz my company is silly about such things and hasn't released an Image of it yet. I can't install it because I don't have the necessary rights, and won't ever get them. In fact, we can't even access the Microsoft updates website - it's blocked with a warning "Your firewall blah blah blah".

Thanks for the reply,
Chris

 

"we can't even access the Microsoft updates website" should be changed for basic computer maintenance. Makes no sense to prevent this.

 

Over heating does seem a likely suspect if it gets that hot.

Download, install and run this to find out your temp's --> http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ (if your able to do that?)

If you havn't already got it Ccleaner is a must have IMO for a healthy set-up, as not only does it clears out uneeded temp files and obselete registry entries, it is the only such app' that does it safely.
http://majorgeeks.com/download4191.html


Q