Help with Win XP laptop problem.

[kinetic (Steve)]

Hi,

Hopefully someone can help me with an XP laptop
which 2 nights ago has become almost frozen!

I was using it as remote desktop to the dome PC and
after capturing a set I went outside and logged on to
the outside PC to process the images.

I left the inside lappy running for probably an hour and when I came
back inside it was in power saving screen saver XP mode.

But nothing would rouse it so I did a reboot.
Nothing abnormal so far, but on reboot, XP was verrrrry slow.
Any action/click would take a good 5 mins to happen.
Ctrl-alt-del showed running tasks and nothing was hogging
the system except for the usual stuff...98% system idle process etc.

A few more cold boots, warm boots...no change , a very sluggish windows.

I can still get into safe mode, but also same sluggishness.
I can run AVG...still sluggish.
Any advice appreciated. I think a windows system file is corrupted or
something but I don't want to do a complete reload because I will lose
all of my image folders and imaging history etc.

Steve

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

Originally Posted by kinetic

Hi,

Hopefully someone can help me with an XP laptop
which 2 nights ago has become almost frozen!

I was using it as remote desktop to the dome PC and
after capturing a set I went outside and logged on to
the outside PC to process the images.

I left the inside lappy running for probably an hour and when I came
back inside it was in power saving screen saver XP mode.

But nothing would rouse it so I did a reboot.
Nothing abnormal so far, but on reboot, XP was verrrrry slow.
Any action/click would take a good 5 mins to happen.
Ctrl-alt-del showed running tasks and nothing was hogging
the system except for the usual stuff...98% system idel process etc.

A few more cold boots, warm boots...no change , a very sluggish windows.

I can still get into safe mode, but also same sluggishness.
I can run AVG...still sluggish.
Any advice appreciated. I think a windows system file is corrupted or
something but I don't want to do a complete reload because I will lose
all of my image folders and imaging history etc.

Steve

Check system restore and if it is enabled do a system restore you wont lose any documents or images as long as they were saved

[kinetic (Steve)]

Originally Posted by supernova1965

Check system restore and if it is enabled do a system restore you wont lose any documents or images as long as they were saved

Thanks mate, out of all the apps that work from safe mode and normal
mode...albeit veeery slowly...system restore wouldn't startup.
You know how frustrated I was when that happened!

It was activated btw...

Steve

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

Originally Posted by kinetic

Thanks mate, out of all the apps that work from safe mode and normal
mode...albeit veeery slowly...system restore wouldn't startup.
You know how frustrated I was when that happened!

It was activated btw...

Steve

BUMMER You may get away with a repair with the XP Disc the only pain with that is that you will have to reactivate with microsoft

[DeanoNZL (Adrian)]

Steve,
It may be advisable to go into the XP event viewer and check for red flags indicating serious errors. It almost sounds like a pre-indication of a drive failure. Or at least run a scandisk to check for crosslinked files. HTH
Adrian

[Inmykombi (Geoff)]

You wont believe this, but my laptop with XP has done the same thing at almost the same time.

When it first happened , I had about 49 Compaq help windows pop up ????
I cant get the computer to do anything now, it just has the hourglass rotating when I try o open a programm, which annoys me....

I have run AVG virus scan and still no go.
Maybe these computers talk to each other ????

[kinetic (Steve)]

Originally Posted by supernova1965

BUMMER You may get away with a repair with the XP Disc the only pain with that is that you will have to reactivate with microsoft

I have the XP install cd which came with the laptop.
As I only seem to do these rescues/restores every bloody few years I'm
a bit vague on the sequence....

Originally Posted by DeanoNZL

Steve,
It may be advisable to go into the XP event viewer and check for red flags indicating serious errors. It almost sounds like a pre-indication of a drive failure. Or at least run a scandisk to check for crosslinked files. HTH
Adrian

thanks Adrian I'll try and do that.

Originally Posted by Inmykombie

You wont believe this, but my laptop with XP has done the same thing at almost the same time.

When it first happened , I had about 49 Compaq help windows pop up ????
I cant get the computer to do anything now, it just has the hourglass rotating when I try o open a programm, which annoys me....

I have run AVG virus scan and still no go.
Maybe these computers talk to each other ????

Sorry Geoff...when I said AVG I meant Avast...
Nothing has been updated or reinstalled in the recent past...nothing.
Avast was up to date.
Only thing is...while I was doing the remote desktop session I did have
internet access...only standby and running in the background..but still
active...maybe a virus got in somehow?

Steve

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

Originally Posted by DeanoNZL

Steve,
It may be advisable to go into the XP event viewer and check for red flags indicating serious errors. It almost sounds like a pre-indication of a drive failure. Or at least run a scandisk to check for crosslinked files. HTH
Adrian

That does sound like a possibility unfortunately I know it is running slow but you may want to try to backup your images to an external HDD ASAP. As for the repair install try this link for instructions
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

[asimov (John)]

Yep, been there done that just recently.

Here's an extract from another forum by me, as to what was going on.

"For the last 3 weeks I've been having real dramas with my laptop. The symptoms were: Similar to running out of RAM. Massive lag, not only on the net but just getting around in the computer generally. I thought I had a trojan running somewhere but buggered If I could find it! Tried changing the page file size, tried uninstalling certain things I was suspicious of. Nothing helped. Also thought I was going to have to reformat as a last resort.

So tonight I decide to get windows task manager running to determine exactly what the hell was going on, & went through my normal routine. I watched as the performance (CPU usage) go from its usual 4% right up to 100% in less than 10 mins. I then shut a few background processes down that were running - no dice. The only application that was running was my yahoo messenger...I figured it couldn't possibly be that, as I've been using the same version for nearly 6 years. I shut it down as a test & BINGO! The usage went back to 4%...."

The hint for you here is check your task manager to see what's up.

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by kinetic

I have the XP install cd which came with the laptop.
As I only seem to do these rescues/restores every bloody few years I'm
a bit vague on the sequence....

Assuming you have another computer available to you with a burner,
http://www.ubcd4win.com/ lets you build a bootable CD of XP to do all the diagnostics and backups. You need an XP install CD, so I hope you mean the one you have is not just a recovery disk.

[kinetic (Steve)]

Originally Posted by supernova1965

That does sound like a possibility unfortunately I know it is running slow but you may want to try to backup your images to an external HDD ASAP. As for the repair install try this link for instructions
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

I repaired the XP install as per Warren's link...recovered the install
no problems. I can access all apps now, I'm really at a loss to explain
what caused it....

All working fine now as original.
You are all terrific, selfless human beings! Thanks so much for the help.

Steve.

Originally Posted by mithrandir

Assuming you have another computer available to you with a burner,
http://www.ubcd4win.com/ lets you build a bootable CD of XP to do all the diagnostics and backups. You need an XP install CD, so I hope you mean the one you have is not just a recovery disk.

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

Originally Posted by kinetic

I repaired the XP install as per Warren's link...recovered the install
no problems. I can access all apps now, I'm really at a loss to explain
what caused it....

All working fine now as original.
You are all terrific, selfless human beings! Thanks so much for the help.

Steve.

Good to hear it certainly gives you a heart start when you think all your work is gone DON'T FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR DATA

[kinetic (Steve)]

Originally Posted by supernova1965

Good to hear it certainly gives you a heart start when you think all your work is gone DON'T FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR DATA

As you speak sir