Strange problem (as always)

[Sauron]

Hello y'all.

It has been a while since I last posted - for those that are curious; yes I am doing well and I am in my second year of studies in college (planning to transfer from a local community college to the University of West Virginia either next semester or next year depending on how things go).

I have a rather unique problem which I have never seen before. Basically, this is new; started perhaps three or four days ago. Basically, my computer stops. Just stops. Doesn't "freeze"; but nothing but nothing will start up (it won't shut down either). Task Manager will shut down programs, but nothing really comes up it. I have run both virus checkers and anti spyware - and everything seems to be clean. I loaded a new game about a week or so abouts ago (Need for Speed Most Wanted) - I had it some months ago and got bored of it - however, I doubt if that is the problem. The other thing I have noticed (and it "stops" the computer instantly) is one of two things - one it tells me that it wants to "install" updates (no, these new ones I had loaded, but I never installed) and the other will be about that I don't have an existing firewall. Both "stop" the system. I am entirely lost on why this is happenng. I suppose it might be my game; but it seems very curious that I never have had trouble with it before. Another problem of course might be that one of my hard drives is going south. And another thing which I did the last time I formatted was that (I have two drives, both WD - one a 80 gig and the other 30) I tried to format one at a time instead of both instead of having to burn a lot of CD's - it backfired. I formatted "D:" first and then copied over most of my things from "C:"; however Windows XP then formatted C as G: and I have been having no end of troubles with that as well. I may format everything completely and make sure the next time that the Windows partion is actually in C:. It just seems so stupid - yet I had weird problems of the sort back in Windows 98SE. One would think that it wouldn't matter where I installed Windows but it does. The bloody thing seems to have fits if I don't do what it wants at the exact time that it demands it (almost like our government). *shrugs* - eventually when I get through college or decide to just put some money down, I will upgrade my system. Until then, it stays as I do enjoy it.

For those that do not know my system specifications - I am running Windows XP on a 1.6 Northwood system with about 384 megs of RDRAM. I mentioned two hard drives, I have a 9600 Pro video card (if that matters) and a Audigy! sound card (again of little consequence). *shrugs* I really don't know what this is. But its aggravating. The system just stops, and won't let me do anything. I really still think its some sort of virus - but Norton says its clean and Bit Defender also agrees. Stupid thing.

Regards,

James AKA Sauron

[juppy]

Hey James, nice to see ya again!

I gotta agree, that's a tough one. Only thing I can think of doing to try and make sure its not a virus/malware, short of using another scanner like Spybot Search & Destroy or Housecall's online virus scanner, is to check in the Task Manager under the Performance tab to see how active your processor is. If the usage percentage is way up there when you don't have any games or programs going, it could still be a virus/malware that your scanners aren't detecting. If it's down around the 1%-5% range though, I'd probably think that flakey hard drive is just getting a little flakier.

[Sauron]

Nice to see you as well Juppy

Yeah - I think its just getting old and its getting time to replace it. I will get myself a 100-160 GB for the C: and another one for the main storage one. Just aggravating I guess - and I have tried online virus checkers - and the system freezes up after about thirty minutes...so yeah..not very conducive..

[Mesaeus]

A tip if you want to get C: for your main drive : disconnect any other hard drive during setup, and connect them back after Windows has started for the first time (first switch off your pc of course)