Trust me. He's never wrong.
I am running AVG-free and going to lunch. I guess I am not. I cleaned out the virus vault but AVG after that says it is starting to scan but locks up. CPU at 4%. Total ram 1 gig, available 584 MB. I though I was low on RAM and was going to download free wincleaner.com to optimize member but browsers just lock up. Thanks for any help.
Shutting down frozen browsers is a pain. Click on X in right corner nothing. Task Manager click on End Task and sits there. CPU usuage at 2%. ??? Weird.
It sounds as if you should use your system recovery disk to try to repair the operating system. Did you have any recent power flickers or blue screens?
Run XP in safe mode to eradicate the problem, and use ‘System Restore’ to a point where the problem did not exist.
I am not a novice user...I have an Dell XPS with XP SP3 that has been running fine for 2 years...now it freezes...I think the last release of “fixes” which means nothing moves and nothing can operate, meaning I have to manually shut down, which will eventually give me some bad sectors and screw the HD...either Windows or Firefox snafu’d something...looked on forums but found nothing...around the same time there was a XP and a Firefox upgrade...been happening for about a week now, intermittently...let me know if you find anything.
I do not want to screw with a re-install if I can help it.
I had issues a couple weeks ago.
It turned out to be the video card.
It made Word cut off and did other weirdo things.
Might be worth a chek.
Could be a failing system board.
How old is the pc?
Greater than 5 I would say take it to the landfill. Buy a new one. They’re fairly cheap these days.
I downloaded the Opera browser from Kim Komando's site to have another browser which seems to work okay.
I tried to reinstall Windows but it says the disc that came from Dell with the computer is not compatible or some such.
I feel your pain.;-(
Before you do anything else install the Microsoft Memory Diagnostic on a disk or CD-ROM and boot from it. You can find it here:
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp
Bad ram will produce all of the random symptoms you describe.
Once you have verified that you have no faulty RAM, boot Windows in Safe Mode by hitting F8 repeatedly after rebooting the machine and selecting “Safe Mode” from the list. From there I would run System Restore and go back to a date before any of your problems occured.
Good luck.
You may have a redirector malware directing your
homepage to a nonexistent one. CTL-ALT-DEL to get the
task manager and see if iexplore.exe is in your process list.
Also run regedt32.exe and see what
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-2115134065-938482983-829235722-31056\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page
points to. If its not the defualt home page of your choice
maybe your browser has been hijacked.
I had similar issues.
Of all the things I tried, McAfee Stinger seemed to resolve it.
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
Try temporarily disabling and turning off AVG to see if that fixes the problem.
Yous guys are slack'n.
You could try using a linux live-CD. That should tell you whether it’s a windows/virus problem or hardware.
In any case, backup any important data you may have on the PC.
Trust me. He's never wrong.
Do what I do. Every six months or so I take all the covers off and remove the that thing that looks like a 15 lb Himalayan but is actually just a dust bunny.
I think you can have browser problems like that if you are running more than one firewall at a time. If you are running both AVG firewall and Windows firewall disable at least one of them. Whenever I have problems I always start by turning off everything that is not necessary.
Start it up in safe mode, with internet support. Download Malwarebytes, the free version, and run it. This should take care of the problem, hopefully. It sounds as if you either picked up a virus or have some type of adware investation. If you don’t know how to start in safe mode, press f8 when your computer is rebooting.