Computer screws up too often 1

[vengeanceforsuji]

I have had my computer for more than a year now, and yet, at the present moment, it keeps screwing up (it never happens before)

Here's how it happened: I installed Hitman 2 one day, and while I was playing it, it crashes right in the middle and my computer reboots. After that, every day, when it starts up and loads all the stuff, the hard drive activity goes haywire and it hogs the system even though the Task Manager says there are no programs using up resources except for System Idle Process. Im very confident that there are no malicious code in the game.


Then just last week, after installing ZoneAlarm Pro 4.5, Nero 6.0, and Soldat (game), whenever i try to shut down the computer, it keeps trying to end explorer.exe and HiddenFaxWindow.exe because they're nonresponsive and I have to terminate their process before it continues shutting down. I really doubt that its ZoneAlarm and Nero, and Im not sure whether its the game (i uninstalled it now). Any suggestions, l33t ppl?

 

[wolluf]

Have you got system restore enabled? If so, can you go back to earlier restore point & see if that's more stable?

Other than that - suggest backup and do a clean reinstall (more a win98 sort of thing to do, but troubleshooting could take a lot longer). If still problem after reinstall - would suggest hardware problem has arisen.

 

[linney]

To get further information about the error look in your Event viewer.

Look in the System or Application folder. You can get to the Event Viewer via right click My Computer icon and select Manage.

Any errors logged in the Event Viewer can be expanded by double clicking on the error line.

Take any event error I.D. number and search for it on this site.

http://www.eventid.net/events.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr.../prodtechnol/winxppro/support/EE_winxppro.asp

Also check any "Information" line that mentions "savedump" and you should find reference to "recovered from a bug check". This is the Stop Error that caused your problem.

You can also turn off "automatically restart after an error" so it will just halt at the fault and display the full Stop Error and blue screen.

Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties .
On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery .
Click to clear the Automatically restart check box under System failure , and then click OK . The error message on a blue screen should remain on the screen so you can record the error information.



This error may be caused by defective physical memory or incompatible software which caused a hardware driver or service request for data that was not in memory.
If the error occurred after installing a device driver or application, try using Safe Mode and removing the driver or program.

To check your RAM.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

To check your drivers.

HOW TO: Verify Unsigned Device Drivers in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q308/5/14.asp

To check conflicting software.

310353 - How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310353&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

316434 - HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316434&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Some general things to try.

See if System Restore will get you back to a restore point before your problem with Explorer.

Try Safe Mode (Do you have this problem in Safe Mode?).

Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking.

Run the System File Checker program from the Run Box by typing.....Sfc /Scannow in it and have your XP CD handy.

If they don't work you could try repairing windows itself by running it over itself. You will lose all your windows updates but your files will be untouched.

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP (Q315341)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q315/3/41.asp