HELP!! My computer stutters and nearly freezes.

[brenno77]

Hi all, I was wondering if you could help me. I am using an AMD 2600 with 750mg RAM and I am running Windows XP pro with the service pack 2 installed.

Now...somewhere along the line after reformatting my computer about 4 months ago due to a dodgy installation of Service Pack 2 which through no fault of my own decided it was going to not let me get back into Windows after a reboot....well anyways after I reformatted and put windows Xp pro back on, this time the first thing that I did was install the service pack...

...so fast forward 3-4 months and now for some reason my computers hardware seems to be very taxed by something or some program. For instance if I have winamp running and playing tunes, when I open up another application winamp will start stuttering and it takes a long time for the other app to come up, if I move my mouse across the screen it will move in jumps instead of smoothly...

I, for the life of me cant think of what may be causing this, it has been happening for about 2 weeks so I cant remember exactly what program installation might have caused it. If I CTRL ALT DEL and close all apps, it will still happen...

Any clue as to what may be causing it, and/or how I might detect what is causing it?

Thanks very muchly.


Cheers.

 

[asdco]

My pc has been doing some wierd things also since dl'ing the pack.I've heard a lot of ppl complaining about it.Media players and browsers got a lot of security attention in the pack,maybe a bit TOO much.

 

[Chrono]

does this happen just with winamp?

have u tryed media player?

CTRL +ALT + DEL and see what is taking up all the CPU

Virus, spyware?

um anything else, i really dont know
bad brand ram maybe?

sorry couldnt really help much more

 

[ImUseless]

Sounds like something is hogging resources, could be
many things.

What do you have "starting up" in your system. If you
have loads of programs that offer "quick start" features
this can hog resources. I have few programs start up with
windows.

Run msconfig, click "startup" and get rid of programs that
dont need to boot with the OS. DO NOT UNCHECK ANYTHING
YOU ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH. WARNING---WARNING

I unchecked quicktime, adobe, realplayer, etc. I can wait the
extra few seconds for the program to load.

CTR-ALT-DEL, "task manager" and look under "processes" and
"CPU" to see what might be hogging resources-"mem usage".

You probably dont need all the services XP has "enabled."
Become familiar with the unneeded services and disable them.
www.blackviper.com is a good place to get the skinny on XP
services.

Like the others have said, check for viruses, bad ram, cpu
running hot. Problems with your power supply in the case.

The key here is to begin to "ELIMINATE' things one by one.

In my opinion, get rid of the unimportant stuff thats loads
in the tray, again, the quick launch crap that win amp,
real player, IE, and every other program installs. It will
begin to add up. DONT REMOVE ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT
FAMILIAR WITH. I leave my virus program, and speaker icon
that is about it for me.