I have just had a very ODD desktop freeze/slowdown. I right clicked on the desktop to get the menu to make a new folder and the hourglass came up. I waited... and waited... and waited... then I got bored and thought I would go away and do something else but the desktop menu followed me around on top of all my other open programs and wouldn't go away. At the time this happened I was running one Notepad window, Kodak Easyshare (probably the culprit in some way - it always has odd issues) and Firefox. Both Easyshare and Firefox are the most recent versions and I have Windows XP Pro running with Auto Update, but I make it ask me for permission to update and It hasn't had anything new lately.
The next thing I tried was using Control-Alt-Del to bring up Task Manager which I couldn't get from the menu OR the task bar, because all I had was this blasted hour glass following me around when ever my cursor was anywhere except over the Task Manager window. I tried to shut down all my running programs one by one with taskmaster and even that took a long time. I had to try each one several times to get them to shut down.
During all of this Task Manager was telling me that I was using about 10% or less of my CPU (Pentium 4 2800 Mhz) and just over half my 1200 MB pagefile, so it doesn't seem to be a resource problem (I HAVE had those kind of problems occasionally in the past).
Next, I used the Shut Down menu in Task Manager to restart the system and again I had this very slow delayed shut down
process - so slow in fact that I could count down the dropping number of processes at the bottom of the Task Manager Window 58 - 45 - 37 - 35 (it stopped there for about 20 seconds and I was contemplating hitting the reset button) then 25 - 18 - 14 and off. It then took about 2 minutes to restart with the opening black and white start up window (the one that starts with CPU Type: etc) staying up long enough for me to read it - Normally it's gone in a flash and it's gone on to the welcome screen.
The system seems OK now since the restart, but I wonder if any of you know what might be going on? Also, Is it possible to Refresh the Desktop from the keyboard, rather than the Desktop Right Click Menu? I have a misty recollection that it IS possible, but I can't remember how it was done.
Thank You All for your time and consideration,
Yours Sincerely,
Ms Jacq Felis.
The next thing I tried was using Control-Alt-Del to bring up Task Manager which I couldn't get from the menu OR the task bar, because all I had was this blasted hour glass following me around when ever my cursor was anywhere except over the Task Manager window. I tried to shut down all my running programs one by one with taskmaster and even that took a long time. I had to try each one several times to get them to shut down.
During all of this Task Manager was telling me that I was using about 10% or less of my CPU (Pentium 4 2800 Mhz) and just over half my 1200 MB pagefile, so it doesn't seem to be a resource problem (I HAVE had those kind of problems occasionally in the past).
Next, I used the Shut Down menu in Task Manager to restart the system and again I had this very slow delayed shut down
process - so slow in fact that I could count down the dropping number of processes at the bottom of the Task Manager Window 58 - 45 - 37 - 35 (it stopped there for about 20 seconds and I was contemplating hitting the reset button) then 25 - 18 - 14 and off. It then took about 2 minutes to restart with the opening black and white start up window (the one that starts with CPU Type: etc) staying up long enough for me to read it - Normally it's gone in a flash and it's gone on to the welcome screen.
The system seems OK now since the restart, but I wonder if any of you know what might be going on? Also, Is it possible to Refresh the Desktop from the keyboard, rather than the Desktop Right Click Menu? I have a misty recollection that it IS possible, but I can't remember how it was done.
Thank You All for your time and consideration,
Yours Sincerely,
Ms Jacq Felis.
