is it just me? (explorer, xp home freeze ups/debilitations)

[jonathonrempel]

1) Version of XP
2) Hardware setup
3) What exactly happened leading up to the problem
4) Exact error messages
5) Any antivirus, firewall software you are running

Hello. I am running Win XP Home, Norton Antivirus 2004, Norton Internet Security 2004, Windows firewall on my Dell Inspiron 2650 notebook (1.6 GHz Pentium 4, 512 Mb RAM, 30 Gig HD, 8 Mb Video, Wifi adapter, running ). I am having a lot of problems with explorer and win xp:

1) explorer going into 90/100% processor usage (for no reason, and often!), but seemingly doing nothing, and staying at 100%. this often happens upon moving or renaming a file/folder, but also happens spontaneously. when renaming/moving files/folders, nothing seems to happen to the file/folder, but upon terminating the explorer.exe process through task manager, the file is moved/renamed just as it should be.

2) explorer shutting down and restarting spontaneously

3) explorer/win xp acting funny after a shutdown-reload episode (as in item 1 or 2 above), including little or no responsiveness from my printer and scanner drivers; many things disappearing from the system tray (even though they're still running); and inability to fully shutdown my system (explorer, etc shutdown properly, win xp logs off, but it pauses at the blank background (still in GUI), and sometimes even locks up (i know it is not always locked up when I can still move the mouse or turn caps lock on/off)). These symptoms also seem to occur often during a windows session which I've launched after a Suspend/Hibernation.

4) print spooler randomly freezing (Lexmark Z65 printer)

I update my operating software and the drivers for my hardware components often enough, so it feels more like a microsoft/dell problem than a dirver problem, but I could wrong.

I just reformatted my HD and reinstalled windows and my previous applications (typically all well-written, well-known software), but the problem has returned in an even more pronounced way.

Also, now after reformatting HD and reinst'ing win xp, I receive the "Cannot open volume for direct access" message when trying to run chkdsk in the system startup. Running chkdsk /x from the command line before shutting down windows does not solve this problem. When I reformatted, I created 2 partitions, 1 just for operating-system files, etc, and 1 for apps and personal files (in case a virus ever damaged the operating system and its partition). Could this partition be the reason for the chkdsk problem, or is the chkdsk problem related to whatever is going on above?

In addition to this, after reformatting/reinst'ing, the Windows Update icon sits for hours down in the system tray, with the tooltip Downloading 0%. My auto-updates are set to automatic, so no ideas here.


I have been SO puzzled after purchasing this Dell notebook in Aug '02. Being quite powerful in its components, win xp and my apps have been so sluggish, even to the point of the above mentioned issues.

I should mention that I often have several programs running at the same time for ready reference (Palm desktop, Outlook express, Bookshelf (dictionary, etc), Notepad (sometimes a few sessions at once), sometimes Word 2002, sometimes fax or phone dialer, sometimes several IE 6 windows, plus everything running in the system tray including caller ID, Norton products, task manger minimized to processor usage gauge, etc. I made sure to mention to Dell before purchasing this system that I often keep several apps/applets running like this for productivity's sake, and they assured me repeatedly that this would be no problem.

However, even when not running these items, the problems seem to be prevalent.

I realize that this is still vague (short of sending you the list of installed apps and a printout of the registry), but thought you might have some wisdom to share. Thanks so, so much! Jonathon Rempel

ps- please let me know if I should include any other information here. again, thanks very much.