Weird PC Problem (Help please!)

Luffy

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Okay... so, I bought a new PC about a month ago, new graphics card and all... It was working perfect for the first few days, then I noticed that it would freeze at even the simplist tasks. Example: Opening iTunes, changing songs on WinAmp, opening two browsers at once, etc. These are all things that even my old piece of shit computer could do without fucking up.

Basically... it's like the surface freezes, but everything else underneath is still running perfectly fine. Example: I have FFXI (windowed :P) opened, and I open iTunes. I play a song in iTunes, everything freezes, but still works - I just don't have access to it. So, FFXI is still working, I can still see the chatlog going, iTunes is still playing music, I just can't move or click anything. Usually I try to CTRL+ALT+DEL to hopefully get the Task Manager running and close iTunes and whatnot... but usually the Task Manager just pops up and I just can't click anything. The CP usage on the Task Manager is usually still at like 1-2%, just nothing is clickable...

This computer is fairly new (using Windows XP Media Edition), and so is the graphics card. I called the people at the computer place and asked them WTF was wrong, and they said it was 'cuz I didn't install the graphics card UPDATED driver directly from the site... So, I did that, and nothing changed. I'm hoping this is some easily fixed problem that I'm clueless about and someone on QCDN can help me out...

Thanks

(Oh, and I have a Spysweeper program and all updated Windows and Norton crap, so I doubt it's something like a virus...)
 
You might want to try having the task manager open first then start ffxi look at how much cpu and ram that program is using then start up itunes. Your new system might not have enuff ram or cpu to run all the programs at once. Also is your new CPU dual core or not if it is Dual core you need to run windows xp pro to use the second core media and home versions use the old windows 98 kernels and pro using the windows 2000 kernel with multi cpu support. But then new medai version might also so not 100% sure on that.
 
Whats your graphic card?
Is your PSU (Powersupply) enough for your graphic card, motherboard, and other stuff that need power?

Please check all your plug, and see if it overheating

go to http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php and see your CPU/Memory info and check if everything running smoothly (Freeware)

also go to www.hmonitor.com and download the software (shareware, 2 week trial), and check your GPU, CPU and Motherboard Temp

And also make sure your graphic card (PCI/PCI-E/AGP{what ever your slot is) is tightly inserted

Like i said before, check all the cable that connected to each input/output, and those cable that connection from hardware to motherboard

make sure nothing is half way plugged, or loosing


If all those doesn't get rid off the freezed frame while background is somehowable still working, go call Greek Squad (usually can be found in Best Buy) or where you brought the computer from, your hardware could be defected

oh btw, Defrag, and CheckDisk if you can
 
Most problems on the average male's CPU can be solved by this... STOP DOWNLOADING BAD PR0N, KAY? ;)
 
Strid said:
Most problems on the average male's CPU can be solved by this... STOP DOWNLOADING BAD PR0N, KAY? ;)
QFT!!!!
strid is TEH WINNAR!
 
Vandoura said:
Whats your graphic card?
Is your PSU (Powersupply) enough for your graphic card, motherboard, and other stuff that need power?

Please check all your plug, and see if it overheating

go to http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php and see your CPU/Memory info and check if everything running smoothly (Freeware)

also go to www.hmonitor.com and download the software (shareware, 2 week trial), and check your GPU, CPU and Motherboard Temp

And also make sure your graphic card (PCI/PCI-E/AGP{what ever your slot is) is tightly inserted

Like i said before, check all the cable that connected to each input/output, and those cable that connection from hardware to motherboard

make sure nothing is half way plugged, or loosing


If all those doesn't get rid off the freezed frame while background is somehowable still working, go call Greek Squad (usually can be found in Best Buy) or where you brought the computer from, your hardware could be defected

oh btw, Defrag, and CheckDisk if you can

if this computer is a manufactured computer, chances are the power supply is fine. unless of course, you bought a vid card that needs massive power.

if memory wasnt running fine, it would effect everything. typically, you would get blue screens, computer would restart, or error beeps during post.

for motherboard temp, press delete during startup and it will go into bios. if your MB is like mine, the temp will show in there. overheating will also typically cause blue screens

on a side note, the problem is more than likely caused by one of a few things that i know of. a piece of faulty hardware IE: cd/dvd drive, a program that is corrupt or having issues. closing the program will fix it. if its determined what program may be causing it, reinstalling will fix it
 
masterorion said:
if this computer is a manufactured computer, chances are the power supply is fine. unless of course, you bought a vid card that needs massive power.

This may be an issue I am having as well. I have a 3.0 Ghz Pentuim HT blah blah, 2 Gigs of RAM, and the system came with a 128 MB Vid card. I upgraded to a 256 Nvidia GeForce GT and every great once in a while (very rarely, but always at inopportune times) ill be tabbing through targets i the game and it will freeze on screen and the background will still be running =/
 
Does the computer behave that way when there's no apps open? If no, then open each application and see where the fault is. Through trial and error, you should be able to figure it out. If it freezes before you open any programs, open the task manager and see what is using lots of proc or memory.
 
i'm actually having a similar problem with my new computer.... whenever i'm playing FFXI, using windower whenever i try and alt tab to something else it just... pauses for like 3 seconds, and when i tab back, it does it again... like, everything freezes completely for 3 seconds, if i tab from windower to windower it's 6 seconds... now, my comp stats are (copy and paste from my computer properties)

System:
Windows XP pro V2002 Svc pack 2

Computer:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU
6600 @2.40GHz
2.40GHz, 2GB of Ram

Page file size is initial3070GB max4096 GB
vid card is: Radeon X1900 512mb mem dual dvi

i haven't actually tried any tinkering really,
 
So... your mouse stops working? Or you're still able to move your mouse, just clicking on stuff (windows, buttons, whatever) doesn't work?

Dagoat said:
Also is your new CPU dual core or not if it is Dual core you need to run windows xp pro to use the second core media and home versions use the old windows 98 kernels and pro using the windows 2000 kernel with multi cpu support. But then new medai version might also so not 100% sure on that.
Windows MCE is just Windows XP with a slightly face-lifted GUI and a special app preinstalled. He already has dual core support.
 
Dagoat said:
You might want to try having the task manager open first then start ffxi look at how much cpu and ram that program is using then start up itunes. Your new system might not have enuff ram or cpu to run all the programs at once. Also is your new CPU dual core or not if it is Dual core you need to run windows xp pro to use the second core media and home versions use the old windows 98 kernels and pro using the windows 2000 kernel with multi cpu support. But then new medai version might also so not 100% sure on that.

The last MS OS to use the 16/32-bit hybrid 9x kernel was ME. NT, 2000, and XP have no more ties to MS-DOS and are fully 32-bit... on all versions.

In fact, the only major differences between XP Pro and XP Home are 1. individual folder permissions and 2. multiple processor support.
 
Yep, though I'm pretty sure you can still do folder-level permissions in Home while file-level permissions are disabled. Home also cannot join a domain (and thus has no GPO support), no dynamic disks, no sysprep ability, lacks IPSec, and finally cannot be the client in a terminal session.

Thankfully most of these are moot points to the end user, so the only real lacking in Home is SMP support. Vista is gonna be interesting, I haven't looked at the specs but I believe there's 7 friggin versions of it coming out.
 
Tagrineth said:
The last MS OS to use the 16/32-bit hybrid 9x kernel was ME. NT, 2000, and XP have no more ties to MS-DOS and are fully 32-bit... on all versions.

In fact, the only major differences between XP Pro and XP Home are 1. individual folder permissions and 2. multiple processor support.

1 dual core CPU = 2 CPU's in your system
2 dual cure CPU's = 4 CPU's in your system
and so on

lol Multipile processor support what do you think dual core is? 2 CPU on one chip aka multi processor. I have a AMD 64bit dual core that I play on when I boot into sucky as XP home it only see's half the CPU and runnes slower then shit. If I boot into xp pro or xp pro 64bit it see's both halfs of the CPU so there is a big difference between them. Oh and also pro has more security functions and domain login support.
 
Er, yeah, thanks Fly, I meant file. XD The rest of those are features that, if you really know what they are for in the first place, you'll likely be wanting Pro for them.

Oh, and Dagoat, thanks for agreeing with me. ^-^b The only security feature, though, that's in Pro but not Home is individual file permissions. The rest of it is networking features.
 
All I am saying is if you are going to run a dual core CPU you want to run a OS that supports SMP so you can use the second half of the CPU.
 
Thanks everyone, sorry I didn't reply right away... The problem was simply that Norton sucks balls and couldn't detect a certain virus causing all this. I suggest downloading AntiVir, the free one (or if you wanna go pro, it's up to you.) It was reccommended to me by a wizard :P and it works like a charm.

Stupid Norton *kicks*

Thanks though!
 
Media Center can run dual core and utilize both the cores. Do a little research with microsoft. Also Home edition if you keep up with all the patches can run dual cores too, not as well as Media Center or Pro, but it still runs them better than it would run a single core. What Home can't run is TWO Processors at the same time. Dual core processor isn't really two separate processors in terms of functionality. Also Home only has support for intel dual processors. Originally Home did not have support for dual processors at all but Dell and Intel made a deal with them. Some of the cheaper dual processors put by dell into its PC come with a home edition.
 
Oh yeah, also if you don't think your Windows (Home, Pro, MCE) is not patched correctly to utilize the dual core (it was an optional patch, not a mandatory one). Here is a guide for checking and configuring it to use dual cores. This helps on any version of windows XP.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60416

The update patch was: KB896256 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...48-8240-4934-BBD8-34FB8A0FCE3B&displaylang=en

Don't just download it and install it though, there's a bit of registry and boot ini configs you have to do
 
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