RE: Minute-long hangs on both my XP machines

From: r (r_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 06/24/04 

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 06:57:01 -0700

Guerre,

Just guessing…
System Restore, Automatic Updates, McAfee, other applications that have a habit of doing things in background. It might be a single program or combination.
Also, since you are experiencing the same behavior on both computers, see if you have similar hardware installed.
Did you check Event Viewer?

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"Guerre" wrote:

> I have an XP Pro desktop and a XP Tablet Edition laptop, both with all the
> service packs and updates, along with Office 2003, also fully updated. The
> PC's are unremarkable, relatively new, and with 1 gig RAM on the desktop and
> 512MB of RAM on the laptop. The only non-Microsoft thing I have running is
> McAfee AV. About twice a day, particularly when I am reading a lot of
> emails, opening and closing IE windows, or looking at documents, the system
> will stop responding to mouse clicks for anywhere up to a couple of minutes.
> The mouse pointer moves around fine. If I C-A-D to bring up the Task
> Manager, and look at the tasks, the system is only 2 to 5% busy. The busy
> tasks are usually explorer, taskmgr, and of course System Idle Process.
> There is generally tons of Available Physical Memory indicated in Task
> Manager -- hundreds of MB. On the laptop, the fan goes to full speed during
> the hang. I don't keep lots of windows open at one time -- a max of maybe
> five or six.
>
> I know it's doing something during the hang, as the performance numbers
> fluctuate. Eventually, the system returns to normal and I can get back to
> work. I haven't been able to isolate a single specific offending act which
> causes the problem -- it's not just Internet related, for example. I don't
> use external servers or Exchange, and the hang is not taking place during
> the background checking of email. Since the problem happens on my laptop
> regardless of whether I am using the network at the office, my home DSL
> network, or even working offline, I don't think it's a network issue. I
> have a clean PC with no viruses or spyware -- I am a bit of an expert on
> these so for the sake of argument take my word on this point.
>
> This hang problem has affected both my systems from day one, and has not
> improved or worsened across the various service packs and hot fixes which
> have been applied.
>
> My assumption has been that this is XP doing memory garbage collection.
> Anybody have an opinion? Any suggestions would be appreciated, as this hang
> has happened, for instance, during PowerPoint presentations and while I was
> following along in Excel spreadsheets in conference calls.
>
> Thanks,
> Gary
>
>
>