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| Thread ID: 57581 | 2005-05-06 15:42:00 | non responsive pc | suszannah (8056) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 352949 | 2005-05-06 15:42:00 | Hope someone canhelp, have a friends pc here amd athlon 1.2 it is not responding to anything, can get the desktop and icons up, but egg timer just goes on and on...unable to run any programs or get into start menu has anyone any ideas.....thank you :help: | suszannah (8056) | ||
| 352950 | 2005-05-06 16:25:00 | Can you bring up Task Manager Ctrl/Alt/Delete ? | zqwerty (97) | ||
| 352951 | 2005-05-06 16:31:00 | If you can this will give you some idea which program Windows is spending its time on trying to load. Normally, System idle process should be around 98%, others only sporadically being attended to. Maybe you will be able to tell which program to shut down and get Windows to give you the opportunity to repair/adjust the offending program. Do not shut down explorer.exe and be careful not to switch off your Firewall if you are connected to the net. | zqwerty (97) | ||
| 352952 | 2005-05-06 18:12:00 | It sounds like it may have a virus or malware problem....Can you start in Safe Mode and check for these first? Otherwise, if you can start it in Safe Mode ( keep pressing F8 during bootup) you can possibly spot the offending process by utilising System Configuration Utility:- Start Run type msconfig in the box OK Click on the Startup tab and look at the list under Startup Item....if you see anything suspicious this may be the culprit. You can now choose to deselct the suspicious item (if any) to stop it starting on bootup. Restart Windows and see if it starts normally. In which case you need to take steps to permanently remove or fix the offender. Alternatively.....if you don't identify any suspicious entry, still in Safe Mode, in the System Configuration Utility.... in the General tab select - Diagnostic Startup Apply Close (or OK?) Windows will now restart with all those items deselected. Reboot the computer and if it starts ok you need to repeat the second process above but select Selective Startup and select each item in the Startup item list one at a time to allow it to start with Windows Apply OK and reboot you need to do this with everty item until Windows fails to start normally....then you'll know that the last reintroduced item is the offender. A laborious process, but sometimes the only way to identify a problem process/programme. I had to do this recently on a computer where the owner had got up in the middle of the night and diligently spent hours updating all his security programmes including lots of Windows Critical Updates. He brought it to me because afterwards it hung on startup just like you describe. After some prompting he told me that although he installed quite a few major updates he thought it would save time by not rebooting after each one so that at the end when he did reboot, the computer had a nervous breakdown! Using msconfig as above I found that Zone Alarm was the culprit and was so badly corrupted that only a reinstall over the top got it running ok. |
brig (1359) | ||
| 352953 | 2005-05-09 23:14:00 | Thanks for all the input....problem worse now, keep getting an error message 'unable to load windows.'......also F8 does not offer safe mode, only load from floppy, IDE 0, IDE 1, or cd/dvd......no idea what to do next......maybe a pc shop will have to be the next move...... :confused: | suszannah (8056) | ||
| 352954 | 2005-05-10 00:31:00 | If you can't boot into safe mode you may have a hardware problem...bit I'm only guesssing. Any of a number of things could be the cause but you need to have a certain amount of basic skills to even begin to get at the answer, and if you get no more help here it's possibly because more experienced readers sense that it may be too a daunting a job to talk you through a diagnoses.....although most of them would love to get their hands on the box and try to do a "miracle cure"in less than 1 minute flat!! Do a search in Google and you'll see the variety of suggestions that come up for this particular problem, and see if you can get any ideas from there. If you don't have someone locally who can help then a visit to your PC repairer might be the best option. Good Luck |
brig (1359) | ||
| 352955 | 2005-05-10 01:25:00 | What OS? No point giving specific advice without knowing that at least. I've found win9x to be much harder to get into Safe Mode than win 2k or XP timing wise with the key punching. Do you have a boot floppy/CD (win9x) or the installation CD win 2k/XP, has a Rescue disc been made for this system? You could also try booting a rescue disc such as Insert or EBCD which have tools such as virus scanners, check hdd integrity/errors, file system tests, etc. |
Murray P (44) | ||
| 352956 | 2005-05-10 02:10:00 | I would suggest you stop and get it looked at. Self-repair is all nice and will.....untill you start making it worse. |
Metla (12) | ||
| 352957 | 2005-05-10 02:17:00 | Appreciate all your help but I know my limitations and trying to learn how to do all these things, but I feel it is a little over my head.......she has had no firewall or antivirus, antispyware program i.e spywareblaster or Ad-aware on the system......she was running XP with service pack 1a, I installed Ad-aware for her from a cd I downloaded as she couldn't stay on the net for more than 2 mins and cleared 113 hits and it went downhill from there.......no idea why I couldn't use safe mode though, it was also a learning curve for me trying to sort it out, thought it might be virus related, I know I can't do anymore, but would just like to know why safe mode wouldn't work as I thought that was fail safe.......thanks guys edit: also no boot floppy only xp installation disk |
suszannah (8056) | ||
| 352958 | 2005-05-10 02:49:00 | Without a Firewall a Windows Operating System computer, especially Win2K and WinXP are sitting ducks. Even without the browser up and running, invaders will get in via the ports used to enable the system to update via MicroSoft, there are virii specifically designed to do this, I should know I got one within 15 secs of being on the internet for the first time on my Win2KPro system the first time I ran it after using Win98SE for a year or so without too many invasions. So is your friends computer able to do anything at all now, besides give error messages? |
zqwerty (97) | ||
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