screen freezes, suggestions as to what to next

G

gjam

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Hello, I have started to get the screen locking up but the mouse pointer moves around alright.

Once I do Control+Alt+Delete everything starts working again. The task manager doesn't show overly high CPU usage.

I scanned and defragged. My system restore (on XP) is switched off. Apart from a fresh reinstall am unsure as to what to next. Thanks in advance.
 
Its probably a driver or too much overclocking (if you do any).

Look also at what you have running at the time as well, is there anything common to when the fault occurs.

Please provide more specific info as well.

By the way - welcome to the boards.
 
Thanks for suggestions. I don't (know how to) overclock.

I will check what's running when it happens. The biggest change I have made recently is install of Omega drivers for my Radeon 9700 card, but don't think problem started with their installation.

I have looked at event viewer, there are one or two warning symbols relating to 'DCOM error, the service cannot be started' and 'RadPciNt the service failed to start.' Are these relevant?

Thanks for the welcome.

The only bit of good news is that on boot up I do not get new hardware found message for Samsung Izzi printer, even though I have spent hours trying to stop this because printer has always worked. gjam
 
Did you change any of the settings in your services?
I'm always getting into trouble with that.
:-]
 
Fisrt off i would turn system restore back on, i don't how many tweaks and beta's have caused my system to crash, it is worth losing the hard drive space. If you are not going to use windows use something. as for your screen locking up, it is definetly a program you have running during start up. did you recently do a windows update? if so go back over what you installed and uninstall till you find the culprit.
 
System Restore is now back on. I have tried to think about what I have installed recently and main culprit appears to be software that came with my keyring style USB thingy. Unfortunately it is not on my list of add/remove programmes but have removed it direct from windows/system32 directory.

The only other thing that stands out is that in task manager the system idle process under processes tab is running at 98 (%?) I haven't looked at what this was before but compared to the other 20 odd things on the list it does seem remarkably high. gjam
 
Sometimes with older or slower drives you get the screen locking up whilst it tried to access the drive. This is especially true of older CD-Rom Drives if there is a disk in it. You say that CTRL-ALT-DEL sorts it - but are you sure of this? Does it eventually spring back into life after a short amount of time?

This would show as the system halting when opening Explorer (not Internet Explorer) or My Computer.

Its interesting that you have recently installed USB drive, have you got the latest drivers for this installed? Or have you tried to uninstall it temporeraly to see if the problem goes away?

Its amazing how often a gut feeling bares results.

:D
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
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