My windows freeze if I press "ctrl-alt-del" then all unfreezes

[TungFree]

My windows freeze if I press "ctrl-alt-del" then all unfreezes.
I need to do it now so often drives me insane Win2k Pro

I noticed it in my Win200 pro IWill +-k266-R mobo. with 1/2 did ram Athlon 1.333 266 mhz bus and ATI AiW 9700 pro.
I tried every kind of virus and worm and hijack this and registry cleaners and nothing worked.

I switche t Asus 8ne-delux mobo. 1 gig DDR ram, Athlon 64 3200+, and a new Maxtor hard drive and the old and ATI AiW 9700 pro. Still no freezzing of windows vanishment.

I called ATI and told them it looks like their card. They agreed to RMA and I sent it in. Now I got me the AtiAiw Radian 32DDR and installed it, after removing the old drivers.

Damn it it was still there, I did a full clen install of XP on another Hard drive, with a formated empty partition. I upgraded to SP2 Jun 05 updates.

Damn it it is still here....

What can be the problem?

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: TungFree
My windows freeze if I press "ctrl-alt-del" then all unfreezes.

Well, don't press ctrl+alt+del then!

Or are you trying to say that Windows freezes, until you press ctrl+alt+del?

ctrl+shift+esc to launch TM doesn't do anything at this point? Does all screen update cease? (if you have the clock visible, will it stop updating?)

How frequently?

 

[delroy]

yes, i was having a hard time understanding thequestion, are you saying that it freezes when you ctrl-alt-delete, or that its frozen until you press ctrl-alt-delete

 

[TungFree]

to both of you yes it freezes until I press "alt-ctrl-del" then it frees up the freez and I can do everything till the next freez which comes quite soon.

 

[TungFree]

ctrl+shift+esc to launch TM doesn't do anything at this point? Does all screen update cease? (if you have the clock visible, will it stop updating?) How frequently?

I will try the ctrl+shift+esc, but it is all the same even if what you suggest is possible that onle switches you fron amy open window to another and another till you rotate through all. I have not tried it yet when it is frozen so far on,ly to seee what the command did, wile all is working well.

on windoes 2000 Pro it did it every 3 minutes in the fresh install of XP it is once in 10 or 15 minutes, but not regularly or predictably, depends how many tasks I do and how many are different websites and text files and pictures and chatting on IRC and so on. as far as screen update, the only thing that works is a single last window and sometimes all windows freez but right clicking on the desktop empty space shows something, all other icons left or right clicked are dead except "alt-ctrl-del" as far as what I tried.

 

[TGS]

Power supply and/or memory seems to be the biggest source of mystery crashes.

Voltage on rails, memtest for a few hours.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: TungFree
I will try the ctrl+shift+esc, but it is all the same even if what you suggest is possible that onle switches you fron amy open window to another and another till you rotate through all. I have not tried it yet when it is frozen so far on,ly to seee what the command did, wile all is working well.

Well, if ctrl-alt-del does anything, then generally ctrl-shift-esc should work too. Perhaps running with the task manager on top might give reveal if a process spends all CPU or something.

I know of only one way of freezing windows: Allocate 10000 user handles (CreateWindow() in a loop will suffice) and then bail. At this point Windows will deallocate the created windows and do nothing else visually for a noticable amount of time. I don't think it will service ctrl-alt-del at this point though. (and it will quickly unstick -- MS did raise the limit to 18000 user handles in 32-bit SP2 (it's much higher in 64-bit), which will be far from fast to clean up, but you have to hack the registry to have the limit raised)

But if you had this with Win2k and now with XP... Same hardware, right? At what point did you notice it with your fresh XP install? Any difference running with antivirus and firewall apps switched off?

I would expect more fireworks if this was a hardware issue such as memory or PSU, but you never know... Have your system always been like this? When did you first notice it?

 

[TungFree]

ctrl+shift+esc to launch TM doesn't do anything at this point? Does all screen update cease?

I have tries alt_trl-esc, and it will not unfreeze once it is frozen only alt-ctrl-del does.
I ave put up the clock to seeif the time keeps tickiung when the windows freeze

 

[TungFree]

But if you had this with Win2k and now with XP... Same hardware, right? At what point did you notice it with your fresh XP install? Any difference running with antivirus and firewall apps switched off?

in win 2k I noticed it b4 any software instalation just after full update at ms site.
win XP began it a bit later with several programs installed already

 

[TungFree]

Update
I Installed another fresh Install of win XP Pro. It includes the slipstreamed updatted files to SP2, till June.

Unbeleivable, but the sucker freezes the start button or the desktop, and again requires, the alt-ctrl-del to access the frozen ones. almost always I can still work in my last "current folder" but not the rest.

This sucks!!! Major. No programs installed, just he bare Drivers needed to function, even befor every single driver has been installed.... It already freezes.
I had suspected, wrongly, the ATI AIW 9700 Pro. But I RMAed it and now I have replaced it with ATI AIW Radion 32 DDR card and am using the All In Wonder TV elite card with it. Both work fine. But Freezing continues from square zerro...

 

[aGreenAgent]

Might be your hard drive. If the pagefile is sllloooowwww it can freeze up while trying to load up the pagefile from the drive. Try disabling virtual memory and see if that helps.

 

[wpshooter]

Tung Free:

Are the ATI video cards that you have tried "REAL" ATI, i.e. BUILT BY ATI or are they knock-off ATI cards built by some other company using ATI's chipset technologies ?

If they are REAL ATI cards, then go to ATI.com to get the latest and greatest drivers for the particular model of card you are using. Also, make sure you CLOSELY follow ATI's instructions for replacing the old drivers on your machine with the new updated drivers. Usually, you are going to be instructed to change your video card driver to a generic standard driver and then reboot the machine BEFORE you attempt to install the new ATI drivers.

If the cards that you have been trying to use are not GENUINE ATI video cards but some knock-off "POWERED BY ATI" video cards, then usually good luck in finding the correct drivers for them. You might start by finding out who the actual manufacturer of the card is and then go to their website and see if they have an updated driver or maybe they will direct you back to ATI's website for the correct drivers.

Good luck.

 

[TungFree]

Might be your hard drive. If the pagefile is sllloooowwww it can freeze up while trying to load up the pagefile from the drive. Try disabling virtual memory and see if that helps.

Interesting, I will try and learn how to do that.

 

[TungFree]

Tung Free:

Are the ATI video cards that you have tried "REAL" ATI, i.e. BUILT BY ATI or are they knock-off ATI cards built by some other company using ATI's chipset technologies ?

If they are REAL ATI cards, then go to ATI.com to get the latest and greatest drivers for the particular model of card you are using. Also, make sure you CLOSELY follow ATI's instructions for replacing the old drivers on your machine with the new updated drivers. Usually, you are going to be instructed to change your video card driver to a generic standard driver and then reboot the machine BEFORE you attempt to install the new ATI drivers.

If the cards that you have been trying to use are not GENUINE ATI video cards but some knock-off "POWERED BY ATI" video cards, then usually good luck in finding the correct drivers for them. You might start by finding out who the actual manufacturer of the card is and then go to their website and see if they have an updated driver or maybe they will direct you back to ATI's website for the correct drivers.

Good luck.

Yes they are made by ATI and I used the latest Catalyst drivers...

 

[rmrf]

Try this and post the results - http://www.memtest.org/

Take a look at this thread, and see if anything suggested in there helps - http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5697&page=1&pp=15

Good luck fixing your problem.

 

[TungFree]

Yhre problem with memtest, which I tried and did not get a bad report, is that the same problem was there, with my old memory sticks (non DDR and it was a 1/2 gig of fine memory chips. the problem did not happen on win98 only on 2k and on XP on 2 computers with different motherboard different chips but both athlon, tried 2 graphics card both AiW Ati. the Radion32DDR and the 9700 Pro 128 memory DDR. tried it on 3 hard drives.
with XP updated to this present month.

 

[TungFree]

So since I had this problem in win 2000 Iwill Motherboard k266-R with 1/2 gig memory and Athlon 1.333mhx 266 mhz bus and both ati aiw radion 32DDR and 9700 Pro 128mhz DDR and I replaced them all including the cables to the hard drives the ram is brand new 2each 500 megs of ram (1 gig) the hard drive is brand new
I tried Both win 2k pro SP4 updated and winXP updated, they both begin with freezing up my screen. as soon as I boot up.

Anyone with my hardware who is not having this difficulty of continually needing to press Alt-ctrl-Del to unfreeze the stuck windows, even at boot up even befor any other software is installed.

 

[ShaneDOTM]

next time it does it, and you press ctl-alt-del. bring up the task manager and leave it up till it freezes again. keep a close eye on the little green box it puts in the lower right hand corner. it will light up as you use up more resources. It really does sound like something is being slow. I've seen computers running XP with 256MB ram freeze like that when a new program is opened and at start up when everything begins loading.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever left it to see if it will come out of the freeze by itself? If it does come out by itself, then you have something hogging resources. It sounds like you have a pretty good setup, so my guess would be that if you have something hogging resources, then it may be software related.

hope this helps,

 

[TungFree]

this maybe software related if the software is one of XP or win2k, I never had this in win 98

but since it happened right after I installed fresh install both on win2k and on XP it only leaves the networking card as not the replaced hardware as I also replaced the Power supply to Antec blue (480 watts)

 

[TungFree]

next time it does it, and you press ctl-alt-del. bring up the task manager and leave it up till it freezes again. keep a close eye on the little green box it puts in the lower right hand corner.

I will give it a shot and see. I think I tried it for a reasonable time but I could give it more time and see if it will unfreeze by itself. I even suspec that someone is hacking my computer and using my resourses. I have not yet assured myself that I am not being hackedted.... so some help here would be appreciated too.

 

[wezthewizz]

Did you resolve this problem with freezing? I am having this exact issue and have had it on windows xp 7 and now still with windows 8.

 

[CRCSUX]

2005 brother 2005, all of these ppl could be dead now.
I would start your own thread.