Windows 2000 Pro - Machine Freezes

[markus97]

Alright guys, I have an annoying laptop that is driving me nuts here.

Basically, the machine always freezes up. Sometimes it freezes at bootup, sometimes as soon as I log in, sometimes 5 minutes after I log in. No error messages come up, everything just freezes and is unresponsive.
Basically, I can never get it running for longer than 10 minutes or so and thats being very generous.

After I login, it used to give me lots of problems with a linksys monitoring tool which is configured to auto start. It would give me error boxes one after another.
So I disabled the monitoring tool from startup.
I ran a degrag on the machine and I ran spyware search and destroy which found 105 object. It cleaned everything. (both of the above tasks we're done in safe mode)

I rebooted the machine and im still having the same problem (normal mode). Now, it's giving me an internet explorer issue stating "explorer.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows" sometimes it will state microsoft explorer (This happens in normal and safe mode)

So I ran a repair on IE6 and I was getting the same message. I reinstalled IE6with a fresh copy of IE6. Now, i'm unable to get in to my computer or my c drive, etc etc, it keeps giving me the pop up. The install was successfull so im not sure why I was getting this msg still. If I boot in to regualr mode now, I can't even get to the login, it will freeze on the win2k splash screen.

I tried the solutions microsoft recommended me here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314867

# 1 and 2 - clean speep doesnt exist.
#3 - Apitrap.dll doesn't exist as well

So i'm thinking theres some corrupt system files.

Currently, im at the point of running a repair on win2k. I put the cd in and it copied over a bunch of files. It's now promping me to reset everything like time and date, serial number, etc. Is this normal? Will this overwrite my data b/c theres a lot of crucial data on the disk that cannot be erased. Can anyone confirm? I haven't continued with this b/c I wasn't sure. Im used to the windows xp repair which is a bit different.

Any suggestions for the above repair method along with any solutions on how to fix this laptop up?

 

[LWComputingMVP]

Could be a driver issue.
Could be malware issue.
Could be a HARDWARE issue. I would test this first before preceeding with anything else - this is also VERY easy to test - download a Live Linux CD and boot to that. See if you can keep that running longer than 10 minutes. If you can't, it's not windows (A Live Linux CD won't be using the Windows install at all or any of the windows drivers, so it'll be almost certainly a hardware issue (I'd first think a RAM issue... though CPU, mainboard, or Graphics card are all possible causes as well.

 

[markus97]

Actually, in safe mode it doesn't freeze up. It kept on giving me those Explorer pop ups which I could never get rid of.

If I continue with the repair method stated above, it wont delete all of the data and files I have on the hdd correct? If the machine is dead, how do you usually backup data b/c for pc's its much easier, just throw the hdd in another machine and copy the files over.

thx

 

[LWComputingMVP]

Frankly, the repair installs, in my experience, usually prove to be an exercise in futility. You can try it - your install could be the one that works. Just make sure your CD has been slipstreamed with the most recent Service Pack before trying it. But if you want something that's virtually guaranteed to work, I would suggest the following:

Create a BartPE or Ultimate Boot CD for Windows bootable CD. Boot your system to that and RENAME the WINDOWS, PROGRAM FILES, and DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS folders. I usually add a .old to them - WINDOWS.OLD, etc. What this does is preserve the contents of the drive and make it possible to restore back the old install (until and unless you start removing files from the .old folders) while letting Windows Setup think it's a new install being performed. This, to me, is the fastest and easiest way of "backing up and reinstalling". It's not TRULY a backup - if the drive fails, you still lose everything - but you don't need to format and spend the time RIGHT NOW backing up.