GOING CRAZY!!! Windows Standby locks up!

[vikenk]

Hello all,

GRRRRRRRRRR!! I'm going nuts here. I shut the lid on my laptop often and let it go to standby instead of shutting it off. Lately, the laptop locks up everytime I open the lid. It never used to do this, it always worked flawlessly.

Only the mouse works. When I do a CTRL-ALT-DELETE, it takes about 3-4 minutes for task manager to come up. I notice that the processer is at 100% usage all the time. Something is locking up the processor, but what???? The only thing I can do is power down and power back up.

The only thing I can think of is my Linksys Compact USB network adapter. It plugs directly into my USB port, not via cable. But....this problem didn't start right after I installed the adapter. It was running fine for a couple of weeks before it started locking up.

I've reformatted my hard drive, reinstalled my software and guess what? It still happens.

Anyone have any ideas or know of a particular problem? I went to the Microsoft Knowledgebase and tried a search, but came up empty.

Any ideas would greatly be appreciated!

Viken K.

 

[vikenk]

I forgot to mention:

When I look at task manager, it's the "System" process that is at 100%.

Initially I started shutting down processes one by one until I noticed that it was "System" that was at 100%.

I'm running Windows XP Pro.

 

[Osiris]

How many icons are running in your taskbar? You running XP with all the updates?

 

[vikenk]

Windows XP is up to date, with SP-2 and all the newest updates. I hardly run anything in my system tray. I only run the system clock, speaker, power/battery icon, and the LAN indicators. No other software runs in the background.

 

[Osiris]

When you unplug your usb does your system not lock up after standby?

 

[vikenk]

Actually, I tried that first. I tried removing the USB adapter before shutting the lid, but it seems to make no difference. I haven't tried that since I reinstalled the OS though. I reinstalled yesterday.

 

[Osiris]

Do you have a usb mouse or keyboard with your laptop?

 

[vikenk]

No. I only have one USB port and the Linksys need the full 5V and won't operate without it.

BTW, I was looking through the freeware links and saw "BootVis", which seems to be a Microsoft product. Is this an add-on? It claims to make booting up from cold boot/standby/hibernate faster and better. Any ideas?

 

[Osiris]

I dont think they support it anymore...you can try thou

 

[vikenk]

OK.....I think I may be getting somewhere. I installed the BootVis, which is a developer's tool. It measures how fast you system boots.

Anyway...Using the tool, I made the computer standby, and when it resumed, I caught a glimpse of the Windows auto-shutdown menu (you know, the one that comes up when you shut down Windows and it wants to shut down a process). The non-responsive item it was trying to shut-down was related to my Synaptics Touch-Pad utility.

So then it dawned on me....my mouse is the only thing that works upon resuming from standby? Why couldn't the touch pad be the problem?? I removed the Synaptics utility and have been using the Windows touch pad driver. I tried it twice so far, and the laptop has not locked up yet.

Crossing my fingers...