strange problem

[NightShade01]

ok i have a dell laptop 5150 and at certain times when i sit down and move the moue the screen saver goes off and i see the desktop, everything appears normal. When i try to click start or double click on an icon thogh nothing happens?! i have to hold the power button to restart. There are also times when i can move the mouse and the desktop will reappear with nothing but the background, no icons, start menu, nothing and it freezes like that. I've done virus scans, reg cleans, ad ware, spyware, everything i can think of. Even tried running programs off a cd b4 windows fully boots and i can't find anything wrong. Tried flashing the BIOS too. Nothing seems to work. Problems been happening for almost 3 weeks now (started when i started school) I don't think that it's the schools software b/c i installed it fine and everything worked for about a week then this all started. There also isn't a pattern to this problem it's completey random which really gets me. Any ideas anyone?

Specs: P4 80GB HD CD-RW/DVD 512 RAM XP Pro

[macko72]

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp check memory!

[Digitalic]

Run msconfig and see what`s running in the background that you might not need. My bet is you could clean things out a lot that you don`t need.

Run task manager. Click the performance tab. Where it says "Commit Charge" check that the "peak" doesn`t exceed the Total Physical Memory. In your case 512 megs. If it does then you are exceeding your physical memory (RAM) since your last start up and XP is forced to use the Page file which will cause many of the symptoms you`re reporting.

If the above mentioned doesn`t offer any clues then the next area I would look at is video.

A hijackthis scan might also reveal something.