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Win 98 system freeze for 2 minutes... then resumes

T

thereuare

Junior Member
My computer (Win98, 700mhz pentium, 128mb ram) has been randomly freezing.

It has occurred when i click a quicklaunch icon, the start button, or double-clicking an icon on the desktop. When it happens from pressing a quicklaunch icon the icon stays 'depressed' as if the cursor is over it and it was just pressed.

The freezes last for 2-3 minutes at which point not even the clock will update! Sometimes it results in the Blue Screen of Death, but usually just resumes whatever it was doing when it happened (for instance if launching MSIE from the QuickLaunch, it will resume opening a new browser). While frozen, i can move the cursor but have no other input devices working (no mouse buttons, keyboard, etc)

I have ran ad-aware and that has not helped.

There seems to be no time pattern... it can happen minutes after booting up or i can surf all day and not have a problem until hours later.

Any suggestions... THANKS!
 
Have you tried updating you video card driver thereuare? When I recently installed my new graphics card, it acted the same way w/ the drivers off the supplied disc, once I downloaded the most recent drivers it went away. Just a thought, I hope it helps 🙂
 
I have updated the drivers, ran ad-aware, ran anti-virus... all with no progress.

Not sure if this is a direct connection or not (as it seems a bit far fetched) but the 'hang/freeze' appears to happen whenever i close any browsers and then try to launch a new program (either from the quicklaunch bar or desktop icon). It's as if closing the last browser on a screen causes the computer to go thru some process that hogs the resources.

When the computer hangs, i can still click on a desktop icon and it will be recognized as 'selected', but if i double click on it nothing happens for 1-4 minutes until the computer 'catches up' and then anything that i clicked during the hang period launches.

So at least now i have figured out some of the randomness and easily test potential solutions.

Anybody seen this type of behavior before, it's VERY frustrating (especially since it also happens with the START button, so therefore it's a pain to shut down the computer as i always have to wait for it to run its course)
 
I've had that happen with my Win98SE at times.

Questions:
- how long has this been going on, and was there some software/hardware installed closely prior to it?
- what's the amount of free resources/memory? Check when next it happens.

When it happened to me, it was because I was down to less than 15% free resources. It would depend on what still was running in the background, and a "log out" (not a reboot!) would fix it.
 
Been acting this way for about a week... no new programs installed or anything like that which could account for it.

Resources are over 70% when it occurs. Using the above 'closing the last browser' scenario i'm able to repeat the hang even upon immediately booting the machine. Computer has 128MB RAM, which is enuff for Win98.

Still not sure if it's another process that is taking over the system (if so, why would it run upon closing the last open browser screen) OR if it's a video card issue... i have no reason to suspect the video card but i know that they're often related to freezing/hanging issues.
 
Originally posted by: tm37
Run Diag on the MEM
Click to expand...

And the HD. I believe that it could be failing. That would explain strange freezes/pauses, especially at points in which the OS would be accessing the HD or the pagefile.
 
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