Computer Misbehaving. Please help.

Forums › Microsoft Windows › Computer Misbehaving. Please help.

Gringuito

21 posts

Geek

#74745 6-Jan-2011 17:05

I need some help.

Recently my computer has taken a turn for the worst, if i leave without any program running, it almost freezes. By that i mean i does not respond for a while but eventually comes to. I have found a temporary solution, ive set my computer to sleep after 5 mins.

I was wondering if there is anything that could be causing this problem, yes i have scanned for viruses with AVG, i am very careful with my computer and have never been infected. Im running windows 7 (32bit) Its quite an old computer. If you want tech specs just ask.

Thank you if you can help.

tigercorp

668 posts

Ultimate Geek

#424716 6-Jan-2011 17:14

Whats happening in Task Manager while its frozen? On the processes tab is there any 1 pocess using lots of cpu?

thorax

75 posts

Master Geek

#424717 6-Jan-2011 17:17

Could be some services that run when windows deems your computer to be idle eating your cpu cycles,disk reads, making you system seem slow/unresponsive, can you leave task manager open on the performance tab and see what happens during the "freezes"?

edit: yeah what tigercorp said.

tonyhughes

Hawkes Bay
8476 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#424718 6-Jan-2011 17:19

What are the specifications?

What edition of Win7 btw?

toprob

126 posts

Master Geek

#424724 6-Jan-2011 17:36

This is quite common if you set the screen to turn off, combined with autohiding the taskbar. if you do both of these, then you can get around it a couple of ways. First, you can stop using autohide, but I don't like that much.
A better solution is to set the screensaver to blank the screen a minute before the power-saver turns the screen off.

Gringuito

21 posts

Geek

#424740 6-Jan-2011 18:33

3GHz Pentium 4, 2GB DDR, 200GB HDD (not sure what type), NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB Dedicated
Windows 7 Ultimate (genuine)

Well, when it plays up there is no process taking up more that 5% cpu, but i cant really open task manager as it is almost frozen. If i put the computer to sleep and come back in 5(or whatever) mins it has sorted itself out. Also, if i leave task manager running it does not freeze, any program using the cpu mildly (like iTunes) will stop it from spazing.

toprob, i like auto hide (too awesome to get rid of, that and i like almost fullscreen web browsing). Also, the whole point of this is i dont want to put my computer to sleep all the time. I can deal with it, but it is a slight annoyance.

thorax

75 posts

Master Geek

#424746 6-Jan-2011 18:42

Any errors showing in the event viewer around the time of the freezes?

toprob

126 posts

Master Geek

#424749 6-Jan-2011 18:45

I'm not talking about sleep mode, just the normal power-saver which switches the monitor off, but if you don't do this then it must be a different issue.

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gzt

17104 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#427587 16-Jan-2011 11:28

Installed any new hardware or peripherals around the time this started happening?

Evolbob

58 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#434607 3-Feb-2011 01:46

Take a softball bat.... well it once worked for me.

Does it have less than 1GB of ram?
If so try and an add some more ram.

As this has recently started, you could do a system restore?
Did you have this problem with Windows XP?

Has anyone else been playing around on your computer?

Here are some utilities that may help clean up the drives.
Run the latest version of Malwarebytes.

Run CCleaner ,

foremannz

34 posts

Geek

#434621 3-Feb-2011 07:39

I'd start with the following

Check the motherboard capacitors
Check the CPU heat sink for dust
Check the system log in event viewer for bad block errors (source = disk)