Windows eventually freezes

Although the PC hasn't froze (I sorta believe we may have fixed this), I do have to hard-reboot sometimes when a window of the type "rundll32.exe. The instruction at … referenced memory at …The memory could not be read".

Pressing OK just brings up more windows of the same and I have to pull the plug. I believe this is the after-effect of the failed sfc earlier.

Here is the startup stuff requested…

Please uninstall these superfluous programs that are hogging your valuable RAM space and PC resources (uninstall completely, not just from your start-up menu):. Captain Tray Pro Clock-on-Desktop CursorFX Rainlendar 2 Stardock ObjectDock SysMetrix uTorrent Vista Start Menu program WeatherClock Yahoo Widgets itype exe (your keyboard will work fine without it) Defrag after removal and re-boot. Start-up: WScheduler - This file may or may not be necessary to load on startup, depending on your circumstances. We can address your file problems next. Cheers, Lee

OK Lee. Please don't shout at me.

Here's how the system stands now :-

I've kept ObjectDock 'cos there's programs there that I probably would never find again.
I've also kept itype. If this isn't running the hot-keys on the keyboard don't work properly.

The others I've uninstalled & completely removed.

One other thing I did was to run the following in order to fix a probable corrupt rundll32.exe file. It loaded it from my Windows disk :

expand e:\i386\rundll32.ex_ c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe

The popup error hasn't appeared again (so far).

OK Lee. Please don't shout at me. ohmy.gif

lee's a perfect gent, he'd never do that.

OK Lee. Please don't shout at me

Shout? No uppercase in my post

You can create hot keys without "itype" clogging up your RAM and resources.

Like I said,: all the programs I mentioned are superfluous.

Cheers,
Lee

No. I meant that I've kept 2 programs & run something else I wasn't told to. So don't shout at me for that

Hi Miss Jones, OK, I hear you PS: I almost forgot to tell you. Your start-up list is now looking a lot healthier

…but the freezing up problem remains. Left the PC running overnight and it was displaying a 'PC is locked' window and another blank window with 2 buttons on. I had to do a hard reboot.

Oh dear, thats no good at all

Ok, so lets make sure there is not a hardware issue going on somewhere.

Right click My Computer / Manage / Device Manager
Anything there with a yellow exclamation mark?

Secondly, we'll check the Power Management settings.

Control Panel / Power Options. Under Power Schemes make sure that "turn off hard disks' and 'System Standby' are both set to 'Never'. Under the Hibernate Tab, make sure the 'Enable Hibernation' option is not ticked.

Cheers,
Lee

Okey Dokey.

Firstly, there are 3 unknown devices under Other devices that have a yellow ?.

No drivers are present for them. The only details - are under Properties - and are :-

ROOT\LEGACY_SYMANTECANTIBOTDRIVER\SYSTEM
ROOT\LEGACY_SYMC810\SOFTWARE
ROOT\NT_EACFILTMP\SYSTEM

Secondly, the power management settings were all set to never on the Power Scheme, but the Hibernation tab did have a check in the Hibernate box. I unchecked this.

A question : I read that "…Once you upgrade your XP installation to Service Pack 3, Windows won't ever allow you to install an older version (including earlier editions of XP) without either wiping the hard drive clean or installing to a different drive…" - Which is why there is no repair option when I boot from the recovery CD.

It is worth building another recovery disk (SP3) and 'slipstreaming' ?? (I haven't put the link to the site where I read this 'cos it maybe aginst the rules).

Thanks again for all your help.

We are going to stick with the 'unknown devices' here, first and foremost.

ROOT\LEGACY_SYMANTECANTIBOTDRIVER\SYSTEM
Have you ever had any Norton's product on your PC (personally, I consider Norton's as Melware)?
If so, please download Norton's complete removal tool from http://majorgeeks.com/Norton_Removal_Tool_SymNRT_d4749.html and run the software.

ROOT\LEGACY_SYMC810\SOFTWARE
This could be a 'nasty'.

Please download and install SuperAntiSpyware Free:
http://www.superantispyware.com/superantispyware.html

Run SuperAntiSpyware and click on: Check for updates
When update is finished, click on: Scan your computer
Click: Perform Complete Scan and next to start scan.

When finished SAS lists any infections found.
Make sure everything found has a check next to it, and click on Next and then Finish.

It is possible that the program asks to reboot in order to delete some files.

Obtain the log as follows:
Click: Preferences
Click the Statistics/Logs tab
Under Scanner Logs, double-click SuperAntiSpyware Scan Log
It opens in your default text editor (such as Notepad)

Please provide the SuperAntiSpyware log in your next reply.

If you have a Melware problem it's off to the Melware section of WTT where it's experts will sort it out..
You can then return here to this thread for any problems you still may have.

ROOT\NT_EACFILTMP\SYSTEM
Now this one has got me stumped. Any Tech. here with insight into this?
If no. well we will come back to it.

Cheers,
Lee

PS Edit. Ok. I feel your anxiety about an XP 'repair'. Don't worry about it. It's no biggy that we can't deal with. Yes, the final worse case scenario is a corrupted Registry and it's a definite possibility due probably to registry cleaning. But hang loose, we can deal with it if we end up in that soup. You obviously have the Tech. ability in spades

OK. Done that.

Ran the Norton Removal Tool. It caused the system to freeze up when I ran it first time (I did close all running programs). When I ran it in Safe Mode it completed successfully. Those Unknown Device entries remain however. (Maybe I did have Norton a long time ago - can't really remember. I believe the PC came with Norton installed on it. I removed it as best I could at the time. We're talking about 5 years ago).

Ran SuperAntispyware. I actually used to run that daily before reporting my problem on here. It rarely found anything and what it did find it removed (or so I thought).

Here's the log :

I notice SAS has marked Bluetack Blocklist as a Trojan for some reason

SAS report:
File threats detected : 2
Adware.Tracking Cookie
C:\Documents and Settings\Lenovo\Cookies\lenovo@atdmt[1].txt
Trojan.Agent/Gen
C:\PROGRAM FILES\BLUETACK\BLOCKLIST MANAGER\TOOLS\IPSCAN.EXE

I think that if your PC is still having freezing issues, we are probably looking at a registry problem unless a program service is causing the drama, so it might be a good idea to check that out first.

Go to Start and then to Run
Type in msconfig and press Enter
Now click on Services
Click on the Hide All Microsoft Services
Then uncheck everything except your firewall and reboot.

If everything is now running smoothly then there is likely a program problem.

Go back into misconfig / services and tick the top 2 and re-boot.
If everything is still running smoothly, tick 2 more and reboot.
Repeat this process until a problem is encountered and then untick one of the last 2 services ticked.
With this process of elimination, we are trying to zero in on any service causing your freezing issues.

If the above does not lead to a culprit, then quite possibly your PC has a damaged Registry, although there does seem to be an unidentified hardware issue somewhere if those entries are still present.

Cheers,
lee

PS Edit: What section(s) of the Device manager are these 3 faulty listings under?

ROOT\LEGACY_SYMANTECANTIBOTDRIVER\SYSTEM
ROOT\LEGACY_SYMC810\SOFTWARE
ROOT\NT_EACFILTMP\SYSTEM

Pardon me for being a bit thick, if I just reboot with the firewall service enabled, if there IS still a problem it may take up to a day for the PC to freeze. Enabling the services (there are 28 non-MS) 2-by-2 and waiting for the PC to freeze will take from anything up to 2 weeks, during which time I can't use the computer. Those faulty devices are 'unknown devices' and appear under the heading 'other devices'. Cheers.

OK, you don't want to go there, but it would not stop you using your PC. Some programs sure. Going into Safe mode does exactly that, unticks all those processes. Your PC does not freeze in safe mode, so there is a good chance that one of those ticked applications is causing this problem.

Being unable to run that Norton's removal tool without going into safe mode was very strange. It's as if you had no RAM available.

Lets do a quick check of your Virtual Memory settings.
Start/control panel/system/advanced/performance settings/advanced/virtual memory/change
Make sure the setting is 'System managed size'.

Also lets have a look at your PC from a very different perspective than Overdrive.

Could yoiu please download and run Balarc Adviser from http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

It takes about a minute to run. Paste the URL of the result in your next post. Thanks.

Cheers,
Lee

PS Edit: Could you please download and run "unknown devices Identifier 7.00" from: http://www.zhangduo.com/udi.html

Withg a bit of luck, the program might identify what those unknown devices actually are.