Re: problem running programs

From: Malke (malke_at_nospoonnotreally.com)
Date: 06/14/04 

Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 08:42:18 -0700

Rick wrote:

> I am having a problem I've never had before and it's
> kicking my *** like I was a Los Angeles Laker! My
> computer has an Athlon 1700 processor with 1.5 GB of ram
> so it shouldn't be any problem running multiple programs
> right? Well, lately I seem very limited in this regard.
> Just a few minutes ago I had Task Manager, Internet
> Explorer, Adobe Golive CS, Adobe Photoshop CS , Cute FTP
> Pro, and an instance of Windows Explorer open. I then
> tried to open Adobe Illustrator CS and the program
> wouldn't load. There was a warning dialog that said a few
> of the illustrator modules wouldn't load.
>
> Once this happend this happened, my machine was pretty
> much useles. The start menu would appear but clicking on
> any item did nothing. I tried opening the calculator from
> the MS Office Toolbar but the link wouldn't open. All I
> had to do to get out of the freeze was to close Adobe
> Golive.
>
> I realize that this is a lot of programs to run but my
> laptop (2.8 Pentium 512K ram) has no problem running all
> of these and more.
>
> I'm thinking this may be a memory (or memory management)
> problem or perhaps a corrupted system file?
>
> Anybody out there have any ideas? Your help would be
> greatly appreciated!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Rick
>
> p.s. I grabbed the screen image during the lock-up and
> had no problem pasting it into Photoshop. Since the
> screen-grab happened during the lock-up, I think the
> memory might be okay?

Thanks for the very detailed post. I'd do a couple of things:

Normal troubleshooting: scan with current av using updated definitions
and remove any spyware that may be running. Remove spyware with Spybot
Search & Destroy from www.safer-networking.org and Ad-aware from
www.lavasoftusa.com. Be sure to update these programs before running
them. These programs are free, so run them both since they complement
each other. It is best to run antivirus and spyware removal tools in
Safe Mode. You may also need to run CWShredder from http:/
www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html . Please read the instructions
carefully. Also, make sure you've visited Windows Update and applied
all security patches. Make sure you are running a firewall.
 
If you've done all that and the machine is still locking up, test your
RAM with something like Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com. Allow the
test to run for a long time (hours) unless you get errors right away.
If you get errors, replace the RAM.

Malke 

-- 
MS MVP - Windows Shell/User
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"