Sudden Vista Explorer Hanging

Hi,

I have an HP vista basic 32 bit laptop. Very suddenly, as of last night when I tried to put it into standby, I have been having problems with explorer hanging. The laptop takes longer to boot and, after I enter my password, it appears to load as normal, but explorer hangs completely. I am able to run in safe mode with networking, although it is temperamental, hanging a few times and giving me the BSOD. (I am actually used to getting the BSOD every now and again, I normally just ignore it).

None of my usage habits have changed over the past few weeks, no new installations/updates, it all started very suddenly.

I have found no malware/virus in scans. I followed the instructions in the read me regarding shells, but no luck. None of the troubleshooting in the suggested threads has worked for me either. I ran Ccleaner, easycleaner and cureit.

I've noticed that my laptop sounds like it is stuttering when it it loading.

Unfortunately my laptop is several years old and I have lost my windows recovery cds. For some reason (which I have ignored for a long time) I am unable to use system restore at all so have not been able to try that either. Msconfig also appears to have been removed from my computer (if that is even possible).

Apologies if I have missed any information, any help would be greatly appreciated. (Also realise my computer sounds a state).

Thanks,

Tony

 

Hi David,

Thank you very much for your reply.

I attempted to update my OS but had issues. Upon restarting my laptop after downloading the updates (87 of them), stage 3 of 3 stopped at 0% and would not complete. There appears to be lots of advice regarding this online, so I followed that (deleted pending.xml from WinSxS), and tried to install a prerequisite to the Service Pack update, KB937287. This failed, I received a message saying this update does not apply to my system, so that is as far as I got. Do you have any advice?

Regarding startup applications, there is no Save to Text File button on my Ccleaner. However I only have 2 applications starting, my HP wifi and synaptics pointing device.

Please find attached a report from the BSOD minidump. I hope I have done it correctly.

Strangely enough, my laptop seems to be working again now. I am thoroughly confused!

Many thanks,

Tony

 

I forgot to mention that I ran chkdsk too. I think I tried to run it before, but have always been given an error message of Cannot open volumes for access. However it did work this time. I don't think anything was found as no messages came up. The OS stage 3 of 3 issue happened immediately after the scan and I had to force power down on the laptop, would that affect chkdsk?

I also managed to run start up repair and another memory test prompted when I switched on my laptop, both finding no issues.

None of my drivers need updating either.

My fan appears to be running normally and the HDD sounds better, still occasional juddering though (eg. when I open task manager).

Apologies for the scattered nature of these posts.

Tony