Computer randomly unresponsive

Well, for some unknown reason my computer will randomly become unresponsive. It started today while I was afk, I figured bittorrent froze so I restarted my computer. The boot up took somewhere around 3 minutes (excluding most software applications). Then I rebooted 2 more times and it became normal. Then after about 30 minutes of use it became unresponsive. I haven't been able to pull off a full virus scan, but I doubt it's a virus because I haven't had a virus for years.

I'm afraid it may be hardware-ish, but I'm not sure, any ideas/suggestions?

 

What exactly was running when it froze?
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Why not? does it return errors--or does it just freeze in process?


randomquestions

 

Even if you don't suspect a virus, you should still visit this thread and follow all the steps within. This will make sure your system is free from malware, and eliminate that as a possible cause of your problem.

At my office, we use Trend Micro's office scan AV suite, which is a name I trust. Even so, I ran through that thread, and found five instances of the mydoom virus.

If that doesn't help your problem, post back with some more info, like your OS and patch level, your hardware specs, their age, etc.

 

You might want to disable hibernation & tweak other power management items.

 

Alright, this will probably answer almsot all the questions. My computer becomes VERY slow. When it first happened, I restarted. The boot time (to get to desktop from beginning) was like somewhere around 3 minutes. And as far as I know, most viruses cannot load before the OS.

Also, I don't think tweaking will help, I've had this computer for 3yrs and it's been fine. It uses Windows XP pro and all the most recent patches.

And when I tried to do a virus scan, it became slow again. For example 1 minute to switch windows. This happens on random occasions, not just virus scans. It can happen anytime, with any program running and even during my OS boots up.

IF I restart, sometimes it'll be back to normal, and then after some time it'll slow down again. Does that help explain?