PC FREEZING TROUBLE ƒ¼ My PC is driving me crazy; it freezes up on me so frequently recently during past few days and weeks. Hopefully I will be able to find someone that could solve my problem. Detailed Description: Basically I have three cases where my pc freezes on me. (1) My pc freezes up when I click the desktop quick launch icon. When I click the "Desktop Quick launch icon" to access the desktop, it freezes up. Sometimes it will take a while (less than 2-3min) for all the icons on the Desktop to show up, then everything works OK. But sometimes it freezes up either before or after any short icon on the desktop shows up. When the PC freezes up, I could still move my mouse, but I am not able to minimum/close or open/launch any programs, including the start menu. I even tried using ¡§Ctrl-Alt: Delete¡¨ to launch windows task manger, but it does nothing except seeing the hour glass showing up a few second before it fades away. So I was forced to restart my computer using the restart/reset button. I don't know why. This is the first issue I noticed recently that is causing my computer to crash. (2) My pc freezes up while I browsing on the internet, especially when it launches a new window and the site was not found or not able to load it. Sometimes it crashes when I try launching a new browser or start another program. (The other issue that I had with the Internet Explorer is that I often encounter web pages that cause the ¡§page error popup notice¡¨ to popup, but it goes away in a flash before I am able to read what it says. But it usually does not cause my PC to freeze. I don¡¦t know what causes this issue either.) (3) My pc freezes up when I start a new program, it freezes up either before the application is fully launched or after the application is fully launched. The 2nd and 3rd issue is what I noticed after I encountered the 1st cause. I don't know what is causing my computer to freeze up, but I tried to pinpoint the cause by turning the pc monitor application available under Windows XP. I noticed CPU Usage is fully used or utilized (100 %) each time the PC crashes. (Note, my computer does not crash every time when the CPU Usage 100% (is fully used), only when one of these cases that I mentioned above is met. Does anybody know what is causing the problem? And how do you solve this issue. My PC can freeze up any time the computer starts. As long as I do one operation under one of these 3 cases that I listed above. My pc has an 800 Mhz Pentium 3 chip with 380 RAM running Windows XP professional edition. Usually my pc start up with about 31 operations running in the background, mostly are default Windows XP services and Norton Antivirus Utilities services. I uses AD-Aware every once a while to remove unwanted spy ware. And I scans my computer for viruses at least once per week. Between the freezes it may be days, hours or minutes. Sometimes my PC crashes more than a once less than an hour. So basically I don't have a clue what's going on here and would of course be very happy about every little bit of help that anybody could provide. Let me thank you ahead of time for helping me... Here is my PC information: Operating System System Model Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (build 2600) Dell Computer Corporation XPST800 Processor a Main Circuit Board 800 megahertz Intel Pentium III 32 kilobyte primary memory cache 256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: Intel Corporation SE440BX-3 AA722396-302 Serial Number: Bus Clock: 100 megahertz BIOS: Intel Corp. A09 03/22/2000 Drives Memory Modules 40 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity (My Windows XP has the most recent updates, drivers installed.) 384 Megabytes Installed Memory Slot 'J6J1' has 128 MB Slot 'J6J2' has 128 MB Slot 'J7J1' has 128 MB Local Drive Volumes C:

Try reinstalling Service Pack 1 for Windows XP and/or Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1. It sounds like you're having problems with Windows Explorer. Take a look at your Event Viewer and see if any errors keep cropping up. Maybe you can find the culprit....