Multiple Hanging Applications

I believe I am trying to teach myself to be a computer expert by recreating every known problem with my computer and then researching how it is corrected. While this is unintentional and very frustrating, I have learned a lot but I am now at an impass and need some help. I have scoured thread after thread looking for help that was already given and have tried everything relevant. I want to start off thanking anyone willing to help and to apologize for the length of the post. I have a problem with deciding what is relevant information and what isn't hehe.

The system is an E-Machine T2200. The only upgrades made to the "factory" build is added ram and a video card. The video card is an Nvidia GeForce FX 5700LE. The processor is an AMD Athlon XP 2200+. There is 1 Gig of PC2100 ram. The motherboard is an ECS model KM266-8235 with a Via KT266/A chipset. I am using the onboard Realtek AC'97 Audio for sound. The hard drive is an NTFS system and currently has approximately 37% free space. The OS is Windows XP with SP2 now installed. I would post one of the reports I have seen in threads before but I am unsure as to which one to use and if the machine would actually run it. If more info is needed please tell me which program to use to get a report that would be the most beneficial.

Another thing I need to mention is, my system restore is not available. After turning it off and deleting the files a couple of years ago to rid myself of a virus, I never turned it back on.

The problem:

Every application hangs but not consistantly. Some applications add themselves to the processes but take no CPU usage and then never start. Some add themselves to the processes but take 100% CPU usage and never start. If I open a media file, video or audio, it opens fine (unless the media player hangs) but if I leave the media player open and switch to another file the media player always hangs. When a folder is opened it hangs at some random time, either when opened, closed, an item inside is highlighted, or another folder is opened (this is explorer.exe hanging I am guessing). The only applications I have not had any problem with is my internet browsers. Both IE and Firefox are running fine but are a bit slow to load each time. Everything seems very slow and the cpu seems excessively idle.

What is most confusing is that most of the applications I have tried will run after several attempts. Once again this seems completely random and more times than not ends with the system hard locked. These problems persist in my usual "selective" startup and in safe mode.

What happened:

I mainly use my computer for gaming. I play MMORPGs and therefore I attempt to keep it as streamlined as possible. I noticed that gradually over the past several months my machine had slowed down. I uninstalled games and whatnots no longer in use on this machine. Did a cleanup, defraged, ran a registry cleaner and then a disk scan. I downloaded a benchmark to test my system and ran it a couple of times. While browsing the other downloads, I found FreshUI. I looked through all the settings (tweeks) FreshUI includes but only used a couple of the features. I did use the fix that it suggested where AGP and Athlon supposedly have a problem. The option was to fix the problem. No explaination was given beyond this. I also used the tool to delete my prefetch files and clean all history in the explorer, IE and temp files. I restarted the machine with no problems apparent. Everything seemed to load slowly and I had a couple of applications hang but I thought that was to be expected due to the prefetch being repopulated.

I then went to Windows Update and updated the computer. I was using SP1 and had been running almost a year with no system problems and no updates. I updated the computer with all recommended updates without going to SP2. There was an updated audio driver so I installed that, I had an audio "popping" problem with one of my games and I thought that might correct it. After the system restarted I had no sound. I rolled back the driver, restarted and that is when the applications started hanging, at least noticably. Thinking conflicting driver, I installed the 5.0? driver released from Realtek on 12/05. This did not help. I then came to MajorGeeks.com and installed the wdm-a384 driver. This did not help. I did a sfc /scannow. Turned off the FreshUI agp fix mentioned earlier. I uninstalled all the windows updates.

Not sure if this is relevant but, while I was removing the games I had noticed I had windows networking components not installed so I installed them all. After uninstalling the updates I removed those components as well. I defragmented again, ran spyware removal tools in both safe mode and regular start up of windows and ran a registry repair program. I have poked and prodded every corner of XP I can find but have changed no settings. All of this while fighting against hangs and locks. I tried to work in safe mode but it was just as bad.

Running out of things to try, I reinstalled windows updates and even SP2. If there was a change it was for the worse. Windows has control of page filing and the Task Manager doesn't show any abnormailties beyond perhaps using less than normal resources. Only one application hangs every time I try to open it. Everything else has a chance to open and perform as usual for a while. The most taxing application I have tried is an online game which could stay up and running anywhere from 5 minutes to almost an hour before it hard locks the system.

While I am aware of the problems that can come from bad drivers and the fact that all of this points to a driver issue, I can't help but think this may be a problem with "oppurtunistic locking" of programs or at least some setting that has been set to not allow programs access to system resources. I am way over my head here though as I have only a minute understanding of how programs work within XP. If anyone knows of a place where I can find some older audio drivers to try to see if it is the conflict please list them. I now regret not turning system restore back on hehe.

Thanks again to anyone who actually read this far. I hate to sound so long winded but I am not sure what I did to cause this. If someone out there sees what all I have done then perhaps that will help explain what the problem is. If there are any questions or any more information I need to get for you please explain what it is and how I need to get it. I will be monitoring this post and will respond asap.

 

ok what id do is run some virus and spyware and malware scans. It sounds like that kinda problem. I cant really think of anythink else it could be... srry

hope this helps!

 

I have made a list of the processes running. I will attach it in hopes it will help. I also wanted to add that in Event Viewer under application I have many errors that are all Hanging Applications. These match to the applications I have already said were Hanging. Explorer had many more entries than I thought. There is one nview_info error which states that a missing dll or remote file could not be found but this is the only one of its kind. There are two warnings. One is a userenv stating that a program was still running when the log in was saved and therefore was going to be stored in system memory and the other is a WinMgmt warning stating that a HiPerfCooker_v1 was added to the WMI namespace.

On the Event Viewer System tab, there are many errors showing. None have persisted to today so I am assuming these errors have been corrected with one of the many things I have attempted. There are two warnings that are TCP/IP issues saying that the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempt. There is one error that I have not seen before but it did happen today. It is Service Control Manager error stating that the following could not start/run: AmdK7, Fips, ShldDrv.

The attachment didn't work so if the processes information is needed I will copy paste it then.

 

None of the spyware or virus tools have found anything wrong. The registry tools did find problems but said they were corrected. It still seems odd to me to have a virus/worm or some malware become a problem at the exact time I was doing what I would call maintanence instead of goofing around in dangerous areas. I will go and see if I can get them to run again just in case though and thank you a ton for replying.

 

Okay, updating what has been going on in hopes it will help trigger an "ah ha" in someones mind out there.

I ran spybot, spyware doctor, adaware se, online panda activescan, trendmicro's housecall (online), Trendmicro's PC-cillin and came up with some items. Mainly inert things and cookies were found. According to them all, everything was removed/cleaned/quarantined. Still the problem persists.

While the scans were taking place, I noticed the tools would go into a "not responding" stage. They would be idle for a few seconds to several minutes appearing to hang. Eventually they would run again and finish the scan. I also ran the same programs on another machine to see the cpu usage. The other machine is 1.2ghz anthlon, 1gig ram, 256mb radeon graphics card, running Windows XP. I noticed that while the problem computer is running any program that program is using 98% to 100% of the cpu. On the other test machine the same programs peak at 56%. My question is this...Is there some way I could have adjusted some setting that would dedicate this much to only one program? If so, couldn't that be robbing other essential window processes and causing the hang/lock?

By the suggestion of viruses I am assuming the problem would be hidden processes that are using so much of the cpu as to not allow these other programs adequate responses. With all of the afore mentioned programs updated and still not finding a problem, what tool should I use to find them? Is there some place I could manually browse?

Another thought I have been attempting to research but can't find exactly what I am looking for is, when fragments get into the ram or into the cache do they clear automatically? If not, could they build up and cause a problem like this? I am still showing the right amount of ram but a lot of the programs will not open for a long time after trying to open them. I have noticed that if I attempt to open, let's say the web browser, it will place it in the task manager under processes but not show any cpu usage. If I click on several other programs, or multiple times on the same program, it speeds up the process of opening but it opens them all at pretty much the same time. Is this a greater demand which gets a reponse? I tend to have more logic than technical knowledge but that is the only thing I can come up with.

Thanks for any input folks. I swear I am about to beat this thing with a hammer.

 

have you ran Memtest?

 

I went and ran the memtest that you suggested. I ran it for 35 minutes. It got to 100% tested and found 0 errors. I should take that off the list of possibilities then? How can one find the hidden processes? Do you think it is possible I picked up something that is so new it hasn't been added to the scanning tools?

I am open for anything.

 

Hello. Please bare with me as I am a computer idiot. I know how to do what I have to do. I was wondering if you solved your problem as it seems this is what is happening to me right now. When I try to download from this site the download locks up around 4%. Ran every spyware program I have picking up little things. Maybe you could give me some idea of what to do as you seem to have great knowledge. Thanks.