not fun

[rivendellrose]

Alright, this is really getting annoying. Claire, my computer, has been having serious issues the last few weeks. She tootles along just fine for quite a while, and then if I leave her alone with programs open or if I open just one window too many (especially in IE, it seems), she freezes, and I have to do a hard shut-down. She also has been refusing to properly follow a normal shut-down command at the end of the night - she shuts down most of the way, then gets stuck on a dark blue screen with a white cursor in the top left corner of the screen, and I have to shut her down manually. Not fun.

I've run virus scan and aside from a trojan that I've had for over a year but can't seem to get rid of, she's clear. I ran Spy-bot, then downloaded and ran AdAware, as well, and took a whole bunch of shit off... and she's still having problems. I checked the tray of things she runs at start-up, didn't see anything too excessive... although the one change I made that day doesn't seem to've stuck, so who knows about that one, and now I can't remember how to get to that. I'm running out of theories.

The only thing I can think of right now is to download Mozilla or FireFox, and avoid using IE, because maybe it's the problem? But it never misbehaved this badly before... so I don't know.

It would figure I'd have all these computer problems during a quarter when my classes are all hugely dependent on turning work in online, getting readings online, etc. I'm pretty much crippled unless Claire works.

I'd wanted to get more work done before midnight and Beltane, but it looks like I'll be spending that downloading and installing Mozilla, instead...

Comments

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

How long has it been since you've de-fragged Claire? Last time I had trouble, I did it and my'n was all better after. Takes a while, but it's easy.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Ooo, that's a good thought. I last defragged her about a year ago... maybe I'll set her to doing that tonight. Trouble is, if she freezes while she's defragging, that might be very bad. Hmm. I'll ask Sean what he thinks.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

Good Luck! It's so scary when they act up, let me know what you decide, ok?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I cleaned out my system registry this morning right after starting her, but despite cleaning out a whole ton of errors, it doesn't seem to've stopped the problem. I'm defragging (hopefully) tonight while I'm at work.

[otterknit.livejournal.com]

The most frequent cause of freezing and shutdown problems, once viruses and spyware have been checked for, is a video card driver conflict. Have you updated it recently or has windows update updated it for you? Are you running XP? If you are, you might want to see when your driver was updated and try rolling it back. Or, alternatively, try updating it forward to a newer one if there is one. Check on the website of the manufacturer, or check for one on Windows update. Sometimes one will cause freezes, sometimes the other. Depends on each individual setup.

If nothing else works, it may be that it's just time to reformat and reinstall everything. It's a pain to get all your settings back just like you had them, but Claire will run immensely well for a long while after that. Most people I know who have well running computers tend to do that once every 12-18 months at least.

Really, the hardest part about it is the backing-up of all your important files, but one easy way around that would be to just buy a new hard drive and use your current drive as a slave. It'll take $50 (for a 40GB) or so (for something bigger), but it might be worth it. Or, option B, if you have a DVD-rom drive, is to find a friend with a DVD-Burner and have them put all your stuff on a few DVDs (about $0.60 for each one at 4.3GB), it wont be as organized as if you'd painstakingly sorted it all onto CD-R's, but it'll be way faster and easier.

I kinda skipped through some of that information quickly (my comment is almost longer than your post and I'm calling it quick?!!). I didn't want to get into anything too complex incase none of it was helpful to you. So, if you want anymore information on anything I said, let me know.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I always take whatever updates Windows throws at me, so I assume it's up to date. I'm running ME, though, so that's probably a fair bit of the problem. What's frustrating is that I really can't pinpoint anything that changed on the computer (no new updates or anything) right before this started happening... so I can't figure out what the hell might've changed. She went from behaving almost perfectly to having at least one total freeze-up per day.

Reformatting might be worth it, at this point - maybe I'll start copying over my files and stuff now, and just do it when I have time.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

Did you try de-fragging, or did Sean not think that was a good idea. Reformatting seems extreme if you haven't tried every other option. I remember all the trouble we had reformatting mine. Good luck, whichever you do, I hope it turns out fine.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

And...HAPPY BELTANE!

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I'm definitely considering reformatting as a last option - I can't do a defrag while I'm here working on the computer, though, so I'm going to run it while I'm at work, and pray she doesn't freeze in the middle of it like she's been doing if I leave her alone for too long, lately. Kari said she'd check on it a few times, so hopefully that'll help... we'll see what happens. *Crosses fingers*

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

I don't think she would freeze in the middle of a defragging, 'cause the computer is working constantly.
Doesn't it mostly freeze after it's sat idle a little while?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Either if she's been sitting idle or if she's got "too much" stuff running... "too much" having become, oh, three things. Which is no good.

She defragged just fine, though. And is still a bitch.

[ursula]

Some trojans & viruses can disable or otherwise screw up your anti-virus software . . . If you KNOW you've got the thing, it's very likely the culprit.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That's my suspicion, too, the more I think about it, but now I can't even get her to run a full virus scan, which completely kills my ability to follow my housemates advice and track the damned thing down to root it out. Yet another point in favor of wiping the whole damned hard drive and starting new.

[ursula]

Brian says some anti-virus software companies have a web-based scan . . . But yeah, starting over might be a good plan. Just be sure you scan your data before you load it back onto the clean computer.