Strange Locking Problem

[andy_d]

Got a strange issue with our Bursars PC at the moment.

 

At random points, it sort of "locks up". The keyboard responds (ie pressing Windows key) but you can no longer click on the start menu, it just doesn't respond... But if you press Ctrl-Alt-Del then cancel it, it suddenly responds as normal again, for a short amount of time, before the same thing happens.

 

Any one had this problem before, or any ideas what could be causing it?

[OutToLunch]

Sounds like a background process/shell extension hanging Explorer - grab a copy of Process Explorer from the MS site and see what's hogging the CPU when it locks up?

[ricki]

Hi

 

We are have had this on a couple of our admin pcs because svchost is taking up 90% of the processing power. We have found that one of the .net updates has to be applied and it sorts it out. Try running windows update and install the latest patches and see if that helps.

 

Try right clicking the bar at the bottom of windows and click task manager. Then click processes and click twice on cpu and see which process is using all the processing power.

 

Richard

Edited June 24, 2009 by ricki

[Batman]

I find it's often worth doing a diagnostic test on the hard drive and memory before doing anything with this sort of issue. I've seen hard disk problems cause the type of fault you're talking about, it's worth eliminating that before you waste your time trying to reconfigure the system.

 

We've had random lockup problems caused by McAffee, so as others have said I'd also recommend checking out your running processes.