Hi, I have an issue with Vista whereby after around half an hour of use, everthing seems to lock up. The HDD light stops flashing, but I can still move the cursor around, although it has the blue egg timer hoop thing rotating. The hover over still works on the icons, but I am unable to get into task manager, click on the start button or open any applications. CTRL+ALT+DELETE does nothing.

Sometimes, if left for around a hour, it comes back to life, but in most cases, a hard reboot is the only thing that will sort it.

When it restarts, often it will run through disk checker and sometimes finds faults with $I30, whatever the hell that is.

The problem does not seem to occur after using a particular piece of software, or at a particular time. There is no slowness otherwise, its really quick most of the time.

Things tried so far:

1). Re-formatted and re-installed Windows:
Worked fine for a while, but as soon as I start to use it regularly, the issue returns.
2). Made sure all of the updates were on, did antivirus and anti-spyware scans.
Found nothing (The laptop is only a month old and has hardly been used)
3). Contacted Dell Support (Useless patronizing nonsense suggestions on a premium rate line).

I've tried to rule out overheating too. I have an Antec laptop cooler, which I always use. Laptop is always cool to the touch all over.

I've figured that because Vista seems to be working in the background on something, that it must be a program that has locked, but I can't tell what. I really can't see why there is no facility in Vista to auto-eliminate non-responsive or programs needlessly hogging system resources or at least record their activities??

Are there any applications which record system activity up until the point of lockup, so I can identify the problem?

System Specs:

Dell XPS M1530 Laptop
2.4GHz Intel Core2Duo
4096MB DDR2 RAM
320GB SATA HDD
Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (Dell OEM) with Service Pack 1 installed

Go to Control Panel-System-Performance-Manage Startup Programs
Do Ctrl-Alt-Del to access task manager and see which programs, tasks, etc. are running.

It could be your AV scanning in the background & hogging up resources -- what do you have?

Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

Yes, this was my initial thought. The laptop originally came with McAffee (Trial Version). Since I have reformatted it, i've been using Avast home edition instead. I have looked at the event logger, but this does not tell me what program stopped responding. Are there any other programs which record processes, so I can identify the problem app upon it hanging? Or a program which monitors/restricts how hungry certain apps are for resources?

I wouldn't mind as much if I knew what was running at the time, and that it was actually busy doing something useful. The blue timer rotating, doesn't give much of a clue by itself. I'm frozen out of the system at random intervals wondering whether it has plain stopped responding or not.

Using Task Manager/Processes isn't much help. Firstly because I cannot access it when it locks and there are 20 or so processes, so there is no way to be sure which one is causing the issue.
I could do with something that creates a log file of the running processes, so I can go back to it and look at the last process to run before it locked.

Does it freeze in safe mode? If it does not, it would indicate a software. Post back to let us know if it does. BTW, you could try Process Monitor if you found Task Manager lacking. Although, it may not serve its purpose if the machine is likely to lock up after few minutes.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...

Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

Check the Event Log for errors or warnings. Look under the System section. When it locks up like that, note the time on your PC's clock that it did so, and find the event that is nearest to the time that it locked up.

Personally I suspect that your hard drive is failing. Maybe you should take back to where you got it and have it exchanged.

WinSimple Software

I have the same issue, with the same dell laptop.

I have it for 4 months now. Somehow it locks up and as soon as i try to close the locked up program that says "not responding" or open any other program it totally locks and ctrl-shift-del (task manager) does not work again and neither does ctrl-alt-del.
The cursor is still movable but when something else is clicked it gives the circular loading image.

I also tried scanning with Eset and SpyDoctor, but somhow they lock up at a certain point. I think its even at the same point, but its different files for both programs so that cant be it.

Sabertooth you are right, the system does not freeze in Save Mode. So it could be software.

The last thing i recall to have installed was a new dell update i think. At least one for the remote control that comes with the laptop.

I hope i added some info to this post. But im hoping for an answer even more ;-).

I just found this post about problems with the Intel GPU that is inside the xps m1530.
But the bullet points they have dont fit my problem.
I guess jalepeno already fixed or returned his since he didnt reply for allmost 2 months.

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/arch...