Windows XP Freezing

[OhSnapWord]

I'm working on an XP machine that is acting very strange. It seems after a few minutes, the computer just freezes.

I can still move the mouse around. Nothing happens when I click. It's like the screen is just a static photo.

Pressing Num Lock or Caps Lock gives me a response from the LEDs on the keyboard. There is no response from the system if I try to use a keyboard shortcut.

Any ideas?

 

[Hameister]

It's been so long since I've worked with Xp, I don't remember if Control-Alt-Delete, will bring up a Task menu, I'm wondering if anything is running in the back ground causing this???

 

[OhSnapWord]

Yes, it does.

Pressing CTRL+Alt+Del in my case does nothing. When the computer freezes like this, it looks like it is a picture of the desktop. The mouse moves. Keyboard lights respond btu the computer itself does not respond to any input.

 

[Hameister]

I don't think I've ever had a scenario where everything was locked up, but the mouse was still active.

I did a little Googling, and came up with everything from driver conflicts, to Win32 registry issues, to mal-ware. Sorry, I can't be of any help on this, and I don't want to just throw out a lot of guesses.

Please post your findings.

 

[OhSnapWord]

It came about after I upgraded the hard drive. The old one was filled to capacity, literally 0 bytes of free space. The keyboard and mouse didn't work either so I have no way of knowing.

I am going to reinstall all of the drivers and report back.

 

[Hameister]

Ahhh, ha, I just came back on-line because I thought of an ailing HDD as a potential issue, or even one that is really max'd out full, unable to transfer data.

However, I see you've just installed a new HDD so ignore that.

 

[OhSnapWord]

Instead of ripping my hair out to figure this out, I am just formatting and reinstalling Windows.

 

[Hameister]

I've been there before! That should do it.

 

[OhSnapWord]

Ran a hardware test, the new drive failed. Guess I should get in the habit of testing drives that I have sitting on the shelf.

 

[Hameister]

Ran a hardware test, the new drive failed. Guess I should get in the habit of testing drives that I have sitting on the shelf.

Ahhh, so it was the HDD!