Windows explorer is not responding. Will not shut down.

[fishquail]

My new computer was working flawlessly until i came back from Xmas break and now - nothing is working.
When i first start windows it seems fine. Can open drives, and view files, but then after a minute...

1. Windows explorer freezes up, so i push < CTRL+ALT+DEL > for task manager and it says "not responding". If i Click end task, it makes the task bar disapear but will not end task.

2. Hovering the mouse over the start button shows an hour glass. will not click.

3. Will not shut down/restart. (from Task manager or start button) have to manually push button on tower.

What ive tried:

Did system restore from safe mode to before the problem started - but still having this issue:
Run all kinds of virus checks, including pulling drive out and running one on another computer.

What could this possibly be??? Could some kind of hardware burned out? This is a new system build as of December.

 

[fishquail]

Upon booting into windows it seems i have about 1 minute before things start to freeze up... and I can no longer do anything to try to fix it.

Was able to instal PassMark BurnInTest - a program that tests my hardware for any problems. the program ran and reported no hardware problems.

 

[g-paw]

Try a repair off the OS CD but you may have to do a clean install

 

[gomerpile]

g-paw you think this could be the cold boot thing I'm not sure as the symptoms of cold boot

 

[g-paw]

g-paw you think this could be the cold boot thing I'm not sure as the symptoms of cold boot

Cold boot is just starting up a computer when it's powered down or turned off. It really sounds like Windows got corrupted. Have you run you're antivisus and anti malware programs. Could be a virus

 

[fishquail]

I have run anti-virus (norton internet security) and also tried taking the drive out attaching it to another computer to run McAfee virus scan on it. Both reported nothing serious.

I have tried to do a repair from Windows XP CD but repair would not contiune. I tried to do an instal (keeping my programs and settings) deal, but that didnt work either.

I tried to uninstal some programs (to find out if some program was corupt causing it) but the unistallers would just freeze up and could not complete.

I had to just do a dual boot and re-instal everything on another partition. (took 2 days now). The other partition still has the problem OS on it b/c im very curious to find out what caused this in the first place if it was not some crazy undetectable virus. (what could it be!)

 

[g-paw]

Honestly, you'll drive yourself nuts trying to figure out what happened, virus, malware, a program corrupted Windows, the computer gods just decided to screw with you, usually because you don't offer them enough beer. Know you don't want to here this but you should back up all your data, do a full format of the drive and reinstall Windows. If the machine is asking which version of Windows to boot, this can be correct in the boot.ini file.

 

[fishquail]

OK, after 3 days i think i found the possible problem.
There was NO virus... and No hardware problem. The problem was software...
I think the problem might have been something to do with diskeeper 2007.

The first thing i did was instal winXP on a seperate partition. (Still keeping the problem partition) Then I installed all software and drivers all over again. Took me 2 days... Everything was running good -UNTIL i installed Diskeeper 2007! The new partition of windows started displaying the same behavior as the old boot. SO... since i couldnt run any programs without freezing... i could not uninstal or do system restore... so....

I restarted for the 100th time in a day and ran "msnconfig" and turned off all process except Microsoft ones, and i discovered that when diskeeper was disabled the computer ran normally!! So I uninstalled diskeeper. ( diskeeper when enabled properly wasn't running normally anyway and was reporting errors). It had previously for months worked fine, but decided to do this out of the blue???.

I don't understand it, but can a program get corrupted somehow and cause system instability like this?

So, Now my only problem is that windows (on the old partition) will not install updates from windows update. It will download but Says Installation failed. >????
Well, Dont know what thats about.... but at least im back to work now.

 

[gone fishin&#039;]

Run defrag and see if there are any problems, could be a bad sector lost the info