Computer freezing/going slow problem For the past few days, my computer has been temporarily going slow or freezing for about 10-20 secs at a time. The rest of the time it seems perfectly fine but then it decides to freeze/go slow for a minute before going back to normal. I've tried to look for a pattern but it seems to be doing this irregularly and I have absolutely no idea what is causing it. I've ran a few virus checks which said the computer was fine, I've taken off anything that I have put on my computer since it started doing this and I've done a system restore to a point before all this started to happen. None of that has seemed to work. I also thought it might be something to do with when the screensaver was trying to come on because it seemed to happen more when I was away from the computer. However, it still did it after I had disabled my screensaver. It also sometimes takes a long time when I click to see my system information in the control panel menu and for the stand by/turn off/restart screen to appear when I click on the 'turn off computer' icon in the start menu. Im pretty sure it isnt a memory problem and I only got a new hard drive in May/June. I realise that most of this is vague information but I honestly can't see a reason why this has started to happen. Anybody got any ideas?
Just a stab in the dark, maybe a fault fan within the PC, causing it to overheat and slow down? Maybe check for spyware?
How much of it freezes? Does the pointer still move? Is your hard drive doing something whilst it's freezing? How many processes you got running? etc It could be a multitude of reasons so: update drivers, update programs, definitely clean up then defrag your drive (I recommend norton utilities speed disk over the standard windows defragmenter - plus utilities cleans and repairs other stuff too), upgrade your CD/DVD drive's firmware (flash em) (probs with drives can cause freezes), uninstall progs you don't really need, check msconfig to see what's loading at startup, get a prog called SafeXP to disable parts of Windows you don't want running, etc etc and see if it still happens.
restore point Have you tried going back to a previous restore point if you are running XP. What power save options have you got set? These kick in when PC is idle set all to never. Make sure temp is empty, this fills up and effects PC performance. When shite removed don't forget to defrag. Get a free copy of Adaware SE, free on the net run this at least every other day. Is your Windows and office updates up to date? Lots to do good luck!
monitor your network activity - do u leave it online/unattended for large periods - u could have been hacked. open a command prompt and type netstat -a with no other internet apps open... see if there's any dodgy looking stuff connected to your ports....
Thanks for ur advice so far, I've done some of it but not all of it yet. It only starts to happen when I leave my computer for a while the first time after I switch it on, before that it runs fine.
Anti virus updating or doing a scan maybe? when it starts doing this lee, press control +alt+delete and see what processes are eating up the processor & memory
Its still doing it and I still can't see why!? Apart from it doing it randomly, it freezes when I click the 'turn off computer' button on the start menu and when any download reaches 99% and the 'copy to wherever' screen comes up. Does that help anyone?
The freezing on the 'turn off computer' part could be due to some program refusing to quit - make sure you have the latest releases of all your background programs (firewall, antivirus, sound programs etc). Run msconfig from Start --> Run and click on the startup tab, see what progs are set to run from startup and uncheck any you don't want too. Is the downloading from internet explorer or a p2p client? If it's IE, try using firefox and see if it still happens - that's a weird one like...
