Real odd and annoying hang-ups.... huh?

[lordaardvark2]

Hello all, i've got a problem, as you can imagine.

my recently built (but not recent by any means technology wise) computer is like hanging. its the weirdest thing ever. i've got xp sp2, and all the updates, and all that good stuff. this comp's worked great for a few weeks, such an upgrade from my 98 compy, but now all of the sudden it keeps hanging. its really very odd. it started... perhaps yesterday, or the day before. it just has like a mini-crash, for about 30 seconds, where its essentially frozen. i can't do anything, mouse doesn't move, keyboard doesn't respond, etc. then it comes back.

these little hangs have been happening not EXTREMEMLY often, but often enough that they are really, REALLY annoying. i can't figure out what i need to do to fix it, either.

i think it may have resulted from some source mods. i dl'd the hidden and plan of attack on sunday-ish, and installed them. i believe the hangs came, but regardless, i uninstalled them. but the hangs continue.

lets see, what else could i have done to cause this? i tried to set up a static ip, yeah. that didn't work. but idk how that would cause this. and then also my mom gets on here daily, god knows what she does while i'm at school.

so, after running virus scan, adaware, disc error check, and... uh... thats all, what should i do? i'm tempted to do a system restore. how far back will that set me? will it wipe out my docs and files and stuff?

sorry to ramble so much, but its a very vague and troubling problem. any help would be greatly appreciated. i can't stand not having a prisine machine! thanks for reading through all this!

 

[fattony]

your antivirus is probably not releasing locks on the files it's attempting to scan, or possibly archive scanning

can you disable it for a day to see how things go?

it might also be some driver or something, i suggest you update all your hardware drivers to their latest versions, video card, nic, whatever

also make sure your page file has sufficient disk space and that you're not low on disk space...

 

[lordaardvark2]

hey, thanks for the reply. after posting, i had 1 or 2 hangs, and then a freeze. i restarted, and a friend recommended running ccleaner. it seems like it just deleted a bunch of stuff... but it said it found 94 errors, lol. so, yeah, ran that after the reboot, and no hangs so far. about 10 or 15 min. in. so maybe that got it. i'll try what you suggested also, updating drivers. my disk space is fine, 115 gigs free. lol. such an upgrade from my old 4 gigger. ANYWAY.

so i'll update drivers. what did you mean about disabling my virus scan or w/e? i didn't get that. i don't usually have it enabled.... i don't think..... i usually close it from the system tray, actually. should probably just uncheck it from the boot list, but w/e. pf usage is bueno, too.

thank you very much for the help!

Edit:

NO! just hung. crap. didn't fix it. nuts. trying drivers.

Edit2: no updateable drivers. 2 more hangs.

 

[fattony]

i don't know which anti-virus you have but yeah you should use a start menu shortcut to disable it from starting on boot and disable the real-time scanner and all of its features

 

[lordaardvark2]

i use avg. i'll disable this. what will this do for me, again?

 

[bpgordon81]

Also open up "msconfig" by way of START>RUN>typing "msconfig". See what programs are set to start up at boot. Look at the path of each box that is checked. You can make your boot up faster by unchecking unnecessary programs from here, like the all annoying Quicktime boot. Just make sure you don't uncheck any anti-virus programs or windows services, only mess with the boot programs. Also, maybe have task manager open and the processes tab selected so that if the next time your freeze up occurs, you may be able to see which process is eating up all the processor time.

 

[lordaardvark2]

hey guys, thanks. i'm about to re-equip my virus scan, and see if that makes any difference. its been off for the day, since last night. i have my boot pretty frikkin clean, i've already played around with msconfig quite a bit. and with the taskman, its the weirdest thing: when the system does its little freezy-thingy, cpu usage doesn't spike or anything. its so weird. my usage is almost always under 10% when i'm like typing this or whatever, you know, menial tasks. its usually around 0~4, with spikes to 10 or 13 or w/e. and when it freezes, it may be 4, it may be 7, it may be 0, not the 100 i'd think i'd see. so its really weird.

i'm still heavily contemplating system restore. think thats a good route? how far back will it take my compy in time? i have never set a restore point myself, so how often does windows do it? what all will it wipe? doccuments, downloads, the likes?

 

[diplomat696]

i dont think the sys restore will wipe any documents, just rolls back system changes but if you want to be 100% safe back up anything you want to keep on a cd/dvd.

You said previously that you had installed something which you then uninstallled as you were copncerned that it might have been the cause of the system hanging. Did you remove all entried from the registry as well for this rogue program?

seems a lot of people post issues when they are using AVG Antivirus which is a little strange dont know though if thats the problem.

Personally I like to use Eset NOD32 AV, works like a charm and very very unintrusive.

 

[lordaardvark2]

yes, thank you. the strange hangups have gone away, about as randomly as they came, and i'm much happier now. i didn't even have to sys-restore!

yeah, i do actually think that avg had something to do with it, and yeah, my friend recommended nod32, i just haven't gotten around to installing it. y'see, when i uninstalled/reinstalled avg, the hangups went away, even tho i had avg like OFF when the hangups were occurring. but, anyway, there's two votes for nod32, so i think i'll check it out. and the fact that other people are apparently having trouble also is another reason to switch.

EDIT:

just kidding. out of nowhere, the hangups have returned. and, turns out i have 0 system restore points. any other solutions, or should i reinstall windows?

 

[lordaardvark2]

alright, if anyone is still hanging around, i reinstalled windows. and it didn't help. the hangs persist. i found something, though: an error log for one of the hangs:

Monday, November 13, 2006

Application Hang

Hanging application msmsgs.exe, version 4.7.0.2010, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.

so ah does this mean that its a hardware problem? this particular hang resulted in an entire system freeze, and i had to restart. i was watching a vid on youtube. i used to be able to do that before these stupid hangs came around. what can i try now?

 

[Zoron]

Go to Tacktech.com and click on articles. You should see something titled "Removing MSN Messenger for Windows XP". In reality, the version of Messenger included with XP is Windows Messenger... even though it works pretty much like MSN Messenger. The first thing I do when reloading my computer is remove this version of Messenger and install Windows Live Messenger. Once it's removed, hopefully you won't have any hanging issues.

 

[lordaardvark2]

alright, i took care of that one. thank you VERY much. hopefully that will help. but, while i was trying to troubleshoot last night, two more errors manifested themselves:

Monday, November 13, 2006

Service Control Manager

The Windows Installer service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s).

------------------------------------------------------

Monday, November 13, 2006

Service Control Manager

The ScRegSetValueExW call failed for Start with the following error: Access is denied.

this may have something to do with my inability to dl sp2. idk why i cant, all i did was reinstall, and it worked fine last time. do you think this is related? how might i solve this problem?

thanks again.

 

[Zoron]

Make sure you update Windows Installer to the latest version.

 

[lordaardvark2]

yup, got that done. already had it. i was just missing something with sp2. anyway, have that now. and the hangs persist. it must be hardware malfunction. how can i troubleshoot this and diagnose the problem?

 

[fattony]

disable the messenger service from services.msc...i think your installation image may be problematic

 

[lordaardvark2]

installation image? as in the xp cd itself? uh.... okay..... um..... any workarounds?

the messenger service states that it is disabled.... wow.... is just everything wrong on my computer?

lol. in a sad way.