Help wanted! Computer keeps freezing up!

[Si Hunt]

Our home PC keeps freezing up. This seems to happen in one of two ways:

(i) Either when you start Windows Explorer and try and expand a folder, the Explorer window freezes and it refuses to load any other programs

(ii) At random times, the mouse pointer will freeze where it is and not move until you reboot.

I've scanned the hard disk using Spycatcher, Adware AND CCleaner. Is there anything else I can do? What's likely to be causing this? There's plenty of space left on the disc.

Si.

[Antony Cox]

It's that RTD - he's contaminated it!

But seriously, I don't know. You've already checked the two things I would have looked at.

What about a de-frag? It could still show the same amount of space on the disk but still be a bit cluttered!

[Si Hunt]

Thanks Ant. It says I should defrag it, so I am.

Si.

[Paul Monk]

Check the number of programmes that are running as well. Lots of programs run even when they're not open or don't appear in the system tray. We had a problem with our pc slowing down and freezing a while ago and after some investigation we found that the last.fm helper was running almost constantly and using up 90% of the processor capacity.
We uninstalled it and everything runs a lot better now.

[Antony Cox]

Actually I had a link somewhere to a great website which shows you how to see what programs are running on your PC and tells you what they are, how important they are, etc., so you can un-install all the unnecessary ones. It certainly speeded up our home PC a bit as there were loads of unnecessary programs slowing it down.

I'll try to dig it out....

[duncan]

Have you installed a new anti-virus recently?

We had problems when we bought a new McAfee anti-virus and firewall. After uninstalling, the PC stopped freezing and we use AVG now with no problems.

[Si Hunt]

Thanks all. Ant, that program would be helpful. There are plenty of programs running but we don't like to get rid of them in case they're important.

It annoys me that things like the program which detects when our MP3 players are plugged in seems to run constantly. When they only get plugged in once every week or so.

Si..

[Wayne]

we use AVG now with no problems.

I've always used AVG without any problems, but AVG 2008 does seem a bit heftier on resources than the previous version.

[Lissa]

Winpatrol will tell you what is running on your computer using the "Start Up" and "Services" tabs. They will let you disable any you don't want or need. You can search this site to see what each of them is and does.

[Si Hunt]

Thanks Lissa. We use WinPatrol, but that website is what we need to determine if we can delete any of the running tasks.

Si.

[Antony Cox]

That looks similar to the one I used.

Unfortunately I don't have the e-mail any more which my ex-boss sent me with the link, but if you don't have any luck with the above, let me know and I can e-mail him and ask him to send it to me again.