Freezing trouble

[Moospammer]

Hello there, as you can see, I'm new to the TechSpot forums, I was wondering if I could grab me some help.

I'm running a 2ish year old Windows Vista computer, running an ATI grapihcs card Readion 2400 HD, Intel Core 2 Duo and with 2gb of RAM.

I don't know quite how to get the information I've seen others giving out so I'll look that up shortly, but here is the basic symptom list.

Freezeing; The computer will freeze unpredictabley and when it does, the screen will stop, the mouse is unmovable and the last sound it made will be repeated very fast. For instance, if I just pulled a boss in the popular World of Warcraft (let's use XT) when he says something like "I DON'T WANNA'" and freezes it'll likley go "wannawannawannawannawannawannawannawannawannawannawanna" continualy. It doesn't matter what I'm doing when this happens, I could be browsing facebook, watching a video or killing my processor in an online MMO.

Sometimes it'll just unfreeze and continue playing within only 30 seconds, other times I'll walk away and go get a drink, etc and it'll still be frozen when I come back, so I usually emergency shut down (Hold the off-button in)

I virus scan often, the latest one turned up nothing (McAfee) as per, despite it scanning over a file named TROJAN (yeah, in caps.) and just passing it by. [You know how you can read the path of the file it's currently scanning? /system32/etc.]

My parents used to use this computer but passed it on to me when they got a laptop, so the remanants of old spyware and stuff I've gotten rid of to the best of my ability, but I'm not an expert, I only just finished my GCSE's.

Oh yeah, I have about 60gb on both of my harddrives free, so they're about 50% full. I de-fragment often, last one turned up 0% fragmentation on my second disk a small amount on my first. I use iObit's Smart RAM and Gamebooster to get the most out of my 2gb of RAM.

Thanks for reading, I'll be posting more information shortly.

 

[Moospammer]

I also do understand that generally 3gb of RAM is needed for gaming on Vista, but this problem occurs when I'm gaming and when I'm not so I'm farley certain I don't need more immediatley, Also, the /dskchk /f /r command isn't working, the command prompt box appears and then dissapears immediatley, I restart my computer and nothing happens, just usual start up. I then tried again but instead of restart I just shut down and started again (Basicly the same process, I don't know how fussy command prompt is.) and that too didn't start the disk check.

 

[Archean]

Can you please provide us with bit more details; you can use either of these methods:

1. Go to Control Panel / Event Viewer, and check logs for anything suspicious specially with yellow / red error tags.

2. Scan with Trend Micro's Hijackthis and post its logs.

3. Create a detailed text format log by using tasklist utility of windows as described here:
i. Press Start, Run and type cmd, then press enter;
ii. in the Dos window type: tasklist /m /fi "memusage gt 100" /fi "cputime gt 00:00:01" /fo table >Process.txt

This will create a very detailed running processes log of everything running on your pc.

 

[Moospammer]

I'm half way thought the tests now. I'll paste what the other guy said in my accidental thread.

 

[Moospammer]

[q] I would not rank McAfee very highly for ability to find malware. There are others better, plus an excellent help on this site https://www.techspot.com/community/...lware-removal-preliminary-instructions.58138/

As to whether or not your symptoms really are due to a trojan, it is unclear at this stage. After scans following the guidance above, you will have a better idea, but it could equally well be something else, such as lack of full updates to Vista, or a bug in the sound driver.

Is the sound provided by a motherboard chip, or a separate sound card? In either case, you need to find out and obtain the latest driver, which will either be a motherboard driver or sound card driver. I do not take the repeated sound as totally significant, as you are doing things on the PC that make it give noises continuously, and the repeating noise symptom could simply be the Vista OS going into a loop.

As to system spec, just look in Control panel/system/hardware, device manager for basics, or google for Belarc advisor or Everest http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...-Edition.shtml You want everest home edition2.20 and be careful, it is one of those sites where it is easy to download something else by mistake, that you will be asked to pay for....

BTW, when you find the application is locked up, you rarely need to emergency switch off the whole PC, and note this can be dangerous in various ways. It is almost always enough to press ctrl-alt-delete together (the three-finger-salute) and up pops windows task manager, wherupon you can choose the applications tab and stop the offending application in a controlled manner. But first, when you learn more, you will find the task manager a very useful aid to what is happenening. You can for instance, discover what thread is occupying all the CPU at the time. A controlled close also allows the application to write to standard error files, and sooner-or-later you will get one of us asking you to look for error in the event log - so there is lots to learn yet !
Last edited by gbhall; 1 Hour Ago at 11:45 AM.. [/q]

 

[Moospammer]

It's not just the application not working, its the entire computer, the mouse stops, Ctrl,Alt,Delete never works, and the computer just becomes 100% unresponsive.

The Sound card I am fairly certain is just some built in crap. I hate drivers so much, I wish there was a program that would tell me exaclty what I needed to get for what and how, but I guess nothing comes that easy.

I'll follow the links now

---

Oh yeah, is this in the right forum? I changed the top of the thing to state that it was in the wrong one as I thought it was and copied it to another forum (BSoD, Freezing, etc) so I'd appriciate it if we could shuffle on over there.

---

Right, I'm currently running the scans, I had a suprising amount of adware, I always thought I was good for staying away from them but oh well. Mostly off MyWebSearch, the annoying browser that used to pop up instead of any other search engine, I disabled the addon with IE (Which I rarley use) and it seemed to go fine.

It found 2 trojans, details of which should be in the log, so far today, no crashes.

I have a sneeking suspicion it may be due to the caseing of my computer being budget. My friend used to work in a computer repair shop and I remember him saying a while back the sheer amount of times they've loosened the screws and it stopped crushing the motherboard was suprising. Then again, what do I know, I'm in my first year of college.

 

[Archean]

Please just try to add link to any other thread/post you want to refer, will look into logs when you post them.

 

[Moospammer]

These are the three logs.

Oh yeah, I pasted your instructions into Dos. It just creates a new line with no text and no information, if it was meant to save a document somewhere I cannot find it.

 

[Archean]

It does create a file in the same folder named process.txt, you can try to view it by simply typing notepad process.txt. Also the first option i mentioned can be much more handier as it gives you a definitive error code as well.

Meanwhile, I am going to look into these and get back to you ASAP.

 

[Moospammer]

There are 0 red or yellow error tags.

 

[Moospammer]

I know MySearch is a notorious one, like I earlier said, this used to be my parents computer.

 

[Archean]

I just went through your hijackthis.log. There seems to be nothing much in it to worry about; however you may choose to do these:

1. Erase all your temporary internet files from IE and FF.
2. You are using so many toolbars e.g. google / msn / yahoo / radio uk etc. If you don't need/or use any of them, get rid of it.

There is nothing special in mbam / SAS logs as well.

However, now if you can do through the option 1 i described above, it may be helpful.

 

[Archean]

There are 0 red or yellow error tags.

Do you have any idea at which exact time your computer crashed last time around? if you know that you may find something in the logs

 

[Moospammer]

Found it, it saved it in my user area rather than desktop :Facepalm:

 

[Moospammer]

Do you have any idea at which exact time your computer crashed last time around? if you know that you may find something in the logs

Last time it crashed, I don't know. I'd guess at.. Yesterday, between 6pm and 8pm. So no, I don't :S

Like I said, It's completley unpredictable, sometimes it wont do it for a couple of days then I'll get 4 in a single night.

 

[Archean]

Edit:
Alright next time it does that; after reboot first thing to do is to check your event viewer logs immediately.

 

[Moospammer]

I know about all the rediculous toolbars etc, I usually just disable them with right click, I do need to delete them. :|

Like I said, parents, my mum uses msn etc and downloads all the msn plus sponsors and whenever she gets a phising message, she'll open it >.<

 

[Moospammer]

Alright next time it does that; after reboot first thing to do is to check your event viewer logs immediately. And if you have found that process.txt you can post it for review as well

Ah, you saw the "GameBooster" thing? That shuts down all applications I rarley use including the Event Logger. I'll exclude it next time I run it to catch the logs.

 

[Archean]

After going through the log my suggestions are:

1. You have patched your system to use third party themes via uxtheme. Restore your system to pre uxtheme patch state. Usually it doesn't do anything harmful to your system; but in some cases it can make a perfectly well behaved pc slow/or unstable.

2. Get rid of McAfee and instead use Avira or AVG. I have been using AVG + Comodo Firewall or Outpost Firewall (all of these have free version) for ages; and frankly I never had any virus/serious malware problems in ages.

3. Check your catalyst drivers; if they are old try to obtain new ones and try those out.

Lastly, do remember to check event viewer logs next time it happens; if above suggestions doesn't help.

Edit:
Having pretty much gone through software side, it is also time to look at the hardware side as well.

 

[Moospammer]

Hold on a tick, uxtheme? This is a store bought rig I admit but I've not personally added any sort of patch to it. What is uxtheme?

Oh, the Catalyst drivers, I recently updated.

I'm supposed to be at a party now, but once I get back tommorow, I will update you. Thanks a ton for your help so far!

 

[Archean]

You are welcome; and have lots of fun while partying

 

[Archean]

uxtheme is a utility which allows you to patch windows theme module so you can use 3rd party themes, and I suspect your computer may have been patched this way.

 

[Moospammer]

Thanks again I'm certain I've never set up this patch myself, but maybe it was automatically done by the manufacturer. I doubt it :S.

Right, how do I go about removeing uxtheme?

 

[Archean]

Have you had any improvement with regard to your system crashes? after following the steps i suggested, and you can download it from their site and just unpatch your system.

 

[Moospammer]

No improvment as of yet, it froze for a moment a few hours ago so I went to bed and came back to find it un-frozen.

I feel like smashing my head in a desk right now. I found a LOT of red and yellow warnings when I clicked the plus, then opened two more tabs on the event viewer. I mean, there's a LOT of them.

And, 3 of these Errors (Just error, not critical) happened in the last 24 hours, so I'm going to find out what they are and paste the details.