I hope someone might be able to help me figure out why my computer keeps locking up. The hard drive light is pretty much solid with an occasionaly blink. I can hear the hard drive whirring very loudly. Nothing works when it does this...I can't even open the task manager with Cntl/Alt/Delete to see if a particular program is doing it. I cannot shut down the computer the proper way and have to resort to holding my power button in until the comptuer shuts off and then turn it back on to get out of it.

I have not installed any new programs before this started happening. I run NAV every night along with Web Root Spysweeper. I also manually run AdAware and Spy Bot S&D whenever I have something weird happening. Nothing is showing up as the culprit. I have a gig of memory so I can't understand why the CPU usage is getting up to 100 percent and hanging there. Here is my system information.

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name T2984
System Manufacturer GATEWA
System Model SR84510A
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 3 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~2933 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Intel Corp. SR84510A.46T.0012.P05.0408182053, 8/18/2004
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name T2984\Owner
Time Zone Central Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 545.96 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 1.64 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

I am usually opening or using IE6 when this happens but I am on the Internet all the time anyway so this might be a coincidence (I am on cable so always have IE open.)

Can anyone point me in the right direction on solving this dilema? Do you need any more information to help you figure out where to start?

Thank you in advance for your help!
Cindy
backstein@mchsi.com

Hi there Cindy , welcome to PCHF.

See if you can manage to have a look in youre device manager what service is using 100% cpu.

Also have a look with this app what the tempertures and voltages of youre pc are:
(when it has been on for a while)

http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

And post back the voltage and temp readings please.


But since it happens mostly when connecting to the net , and something is using 100% cpu time malware could very well be the problem aswell.
If you click on the "Prework" link below in my sig , follow the instructions there and post back with the 2 resulting log files then ill have a look at that.

Thanks for answering so quickly! Here are my results of the scans. When I first tried to download and run the Speedfan I kept getting an error message (will enclose a screen print of it just in case it is helpful). so I proceeded to the other prework scans. Then before posting here I tried to download and run Speedfan again and this time it worked. I wasn't sure how to report the info to you as I couldn't copy and paste the screen so I ran a report as if I was going to send it to the Speedfan people, then copied and pasted the info into a word document to send here. So I will have 5 attachments - Speedfan error message, Speedfan report, Ewido log, Spysweeper log, and HiJack this log.
HOWEVER, I just realized that I can't figure out how to put in an attachment. I will have to go search for how to do this or can you tell me an easy way to do this?

well I went into advanced and found the attachment option, however I had to covert my Speedfan report from a word doc into into a text document...I think that did okay but I could not covert the screenprint with the error message from when I first tried to download and run Speedfan before running the other scans. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.

Attached Files

	hijackthis.log (13.7 KB, 3 views)
	Spy Sweeper Session Log.txt (850 Bytes, 3 views)
	Scan report_20060521.txt.txt (1.5 KB, 4 views)
	speedfan report.txt (35.2 KB, 4 views)

Oh...I forgot to say that when the computer freezes up I cannot open the task manager to see what item is hogging the CPU. I can't do anything but push and hold the power button to turn off the computer to get it out of it's freeze.

Start/control panel/administrative tools/event viewer...
in the left pne you can click on:
applications
security
system

I'd try applications first... maybe you can track down whatever is causing the issue. Don't panic when you see these logs... Windows has a LOT of minor program errors that you never see in the normal course of things. From what you describe-- you'd be looking for one app with a LOT of entries --maybe hundreds. If one program/service is having "issues" --it should shows up here. Hope this helps