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Computer crashing, help?Follow

#1 Nov 12 2010 at 7:03 PM Rating: Good
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So now i have a slightly new situation. I'll be playing 14, or 11, and have the internet open in the background, doing facebook games, chat, etc. If i try to open additional tabs, sometimes my internet locks up, and the red processing light stays lit. Usually, after a min or 2, it goes back to normal, but lately, its been locking up for extended times. Not only does it lock up IE, but also anything else i have open. And after sitting frozen for about 3-5 mins, my computer crashes and reboots.

More recently, as in the past few days, when it reboots itsself, it starts loading everything and locks up again, forcing another crash.

I have malware bytes and webroot, both come up with nothing. And it seems to only happen when i do a bunch of stuff on facebook. Ive tried looking up help on other forums, but no luck so far. Comp does not need to be defraged (donw weekly with a schedule) and im kinda at a loss of what to do.

Its increasingly frustrating, and i just don't know how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Donny
#2 Nov 12 2010 at 10:36 PM Rating: Excellent
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Need some more details here. what model computer is this, what processor speed, how much ram is available, what video card, what operating system are you running, if you press ctrl+alt+del and enter task manager how much of your available ram does it say is currently in use, what type of internet do you have (broadband, dial up, etc)
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#3 Nov 13 2010 at 9:23 AM Rating: Good
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Vista
Biostar Group Manufacturer
Model G31-M7 TE
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3 GHz
Memory 4094 MB Ram
Directx Version 10

Vid Card ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

We have optimum online, assuming thats DSL? not exactly sure.


Just reading this off Task manager:
Mem 2.61 GB (the little memory sensor thingy)
Phy mem (MB)
total 4094
Cached 2263
Free 42

Kernel Mem (MB)
Total 352
Paged 291
Nonpaged 60

Processes 45
CPU usage ~50-70%
Phy Mem 65%

Hope that helps, thanks again.
#4 Nov 13 2010 at 2:42 PM Rating: Excellent
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You have 4GB ram in that thing, but windows 32 bit can only address a maximum of 3.3 GB it looks like you are using almost all of it which is bringing your computer to a halt. You can try increasing the system page file size, but there almost has to be something else here using up a significant amount of ram. Malwarebytes didn't see anythign so i'm inclined to not think its a virus, but maybe there are a large number of startup programs that you don't really need at startup that you can disable and free up some additional ram?

Your video card uses a very large chunk of ram registers as well, so you may be stuck with an allocation pool even smaller than the 3.3GB windows vista 32 bit can actually address.

Your other option would be to upgrade to windows 7 64 bit (which will require a full reinstallation) and put 8GB ram in the machine. Long term I think you would be happier with that option given your computer usage habits, but there would be cost involved.
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#5 Nov 15 2010 at 8:07 AM Rating: Good
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ran into a similar situation with my daughter's laptop last week. Anytime whe went to facebook we would have to reboot.

I killed the wifi and Zonealarm, then stripped all the easily reloadable stuff off it--Real Player, Flash Player, Shockwave, Acrobat, Java--all that free stuff that hooks into the browser when you go there. Then I did the usual scans,(malwarebytes, etc) and then booted to recovery console and ran a checkdisk with repair option until it came back with no errors, gave it a full defrag and reloaded updated java and adobe crud and it <seems> to be fine so far.

I am guessing the drive got a weak sector on a critical file or something, who knows.

Raist
#6 Nov 15 2010 at 8:18 AM Rating: Good
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The root issue, as suggested. is more than likely that something, or somethings, is running in the background and consuming system resources.

While 7 64-bit would be a nice upgrade either way, the RAM really shouldn't be necessary. Either way, I would suggest that you try a few other tools, such as Combofix for malware (tends to be better for rootkits), or Hijackthis to check startup items/BHOs/etc. If you can't resolve it, before spending money (unless you just want an excuse to), back your stuff up and do a full format/reinstall. If it's something hidden, or that's not working as intended, that'll clear it off and the machine should work fine. If it's a problem with your configuration, then it'll show up again, and you'll know you need to change something. Having used a similar machine for a couple years, however, I really don't think additional RAM is the answer, unless you've got some big background tasks running that you didn't mention.
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