Windows XP: Windows Xp system just randomly freezes, What's causing this?  

There are lots of factors which may cause your computer to freeze. There are spywares out there which are not detectable through antiviruses. There are some virus too which steals resources from your RAM making your computer slow and eventually freeze. Some of them must be taken out of your computer manually which means you have yo do a lot of effort using the command prompt and editing your registry which is kind of dangerous. Did you delete anything? Did you shutdown your computer properly? Did you install something? These are just some of the questions to need to ask yourself then maybe you'll know the cause.

Does it happen only when you are exploring the internet. meaning that you have the internet open and possibly other programs open. But it usually freezes when you are using the internet. if this is the case do you use internet explorer. Also do you use real player more importantly the newer version that came out about the end of July of this year.

Please reply back and let me know.

Bryan

Firstly unintall your antivirus that you recently intall. then reboot computer and start the windows. Problem should be resolved by this. Verify the problem if is it resolved.
If not it is spywares which are cousing automatically background process.
Some viruses make combined vulnerbility with microsoft office casuing this behaviour.
Even if you run a complete scan traces of vulnerbilities will be remain.

OK, here goes. Get these if you don't have them. Norton antivirus is still the best. Spybot - search and destroy is free off the web and so is CC cleaner. Use them. Also delete cookies and temp files. This was happening to me,too. Also delete programs you have downloaded and don't use, they maybe piggybacking hidden nasties, paricularly cookies which don't show up on virus scans ect. Good luck.

Defragment your system. use a registry software to check your computer. go to run type
%temp% and now delete all the files here. they are useless in your PC.

It sounds like you might have too many "unseen" programs running in the background (spyware)... in which case a virus scan would show nothing.
you really need a spyware scan (spybot is one of the best) and if that doesn't show anything.. you might want to defrag... you wouldn't believe how that can slow you down or even make you freeze up.

* no virus scan can catch EVERY virus.. so you might want to do an online scan, using many different scanners. what yours missed.. another virus scanner might find.

Hi Husi,

your problem of computer slowing down seems to be of the resource conflict or a deadlock. which is caused by too many programs running in the background or through the exclusive disc access or viruses. Let us discuss these things one by one.

1) too many programs running:- First of all while using your computer and when it is not frozen. Open the task manager and then click on the Processes tab check for the processes under your name if you find any unknown process just kill it.

2) exclusive disk access: Using more than one virus protection software causes the disk to freeze. Every antivirus will have a feature of realtime protection which will be scanning the computer in the background. If two antivirus software scan the same file at the same time the conflict can occur so better install only one Antivirus and update it.

3) Once you update the antivirus run a full scan of your computer. So that you can know that you have a virus or not on your computer.

Before doing the above steps you can try these and check if the issue persists:

1- delete all unecessary files and software that you dont use
2- delete all the temporary files and internet cache files
3- do a clean boot of your computer
4- do a disk defragmentation

This should help you a lot if it does not work...kindly let me know i will help you in getting your computer working properly

If you have service pack 2, there is a service pack 3. Try doing your updates. These are very important. You should have them on and allow your system to update automatically, many are security updates, even if you have to allow your computer to stay on for hours; allow the updates to download and install.
Sometimes a computer will freeze if the processor gets too hot. make sure your fan is running. These can fail and in turn burn up your cpu, rendering your laptop useless, the you would have to replace the cpu, which could run a couple hundred.
If you have anyway of dusting your system, do so, although laptops are pretty compact and not much dust gets inside, excessive dust can cause a computer to overheat also.
Make sure you have have a good SPYWARE program also, like Spybot or spywareblaster. They are free downloads. Good luck.

Lots of good responses in this discussion, so I'm not going to repeat them. I just wanted to add something: Try getting a program to monitor the temperatures, it could be that the system is overheating.

I'm not familiar with laptops, but just a few weeks ago I fixed a friend's desktop that had this exact same problem and it was because the cooler had got loose and fell down when the guy moved to a different apartment.


Rich

I have the exact same laptop. I bought mine in March of 2007. The freezing things seems to be happening more just lately. Sometimes it's for a couple of seconds and sometimes I have to shut down the compputer and reboot. This is alot of trouble because of all the things I have to click on to get to gmail. I have done the same things and ran a scan and everything comes back virus free. If you find out at some point what it is I hope you will post it. There must be more people with the same trouble. I need to read the other responses to your discussion to see what is said. Thank you for bringing this discussion to us.