PC help - temporary hanging XP SP2

My PC has started acting up this week - self built PC with XP SP2, Athlon X2 4800+, 2GB RAM, etc. One or two applications will freeze up for between 5 seconds and a minute, then keep going, in the meantime the other apps will work fine. Only thing that's happened recently is I uninstalled a trial version of Kaspersky antivirus, because it kept taking 50% of my CPU. I have no virus protection at the moment.

For example:
- I just opened two RAW images in photoshop selected an area, then hit copy. PS froze. Word did the same thing earlier this evening.
- Double clicking on a JPG causes explorer to hang for 20 seconds, then ACDSee opens up and shows the image. It used to be near instant. While it's hung if CS3 is open I can switch to it, and open the image using file -> open.

Anyone have any ideas how to fix it?

tim _ first off I wish someone made a virus scan application that wasn't a Hog. I had a similar situation (applications would hang up or stop responding) on my new setup and it turned out to be the WinACD driver for my Apple Cinema monitor. Since I uninstalled it I have to power off the display via the power strip now but it solved my application clashes. Funny thing is that driver worked fine on my previous Intel P4 3.0 rig.

When I feel somthing is not working right on my PC, the first place I look is the active processes, then event viewer.

Sometimes by looking at what process is hogging the processor gives you an idea what is wrong...though not always.

Does it make a difference if you unplug your machine from the network?

Quiet recently we had a contractor who's laptop was working fine for 2 days suddenly started freezing. He couldn't figure out what program is was as it was svchost.exe that was hogging the CPU (This is a windows process that manages DLL and can have several instances running) One of our system engineers worked out that Windows Auto Update was borked and just hogged everything. Once he dissabled that it was fine.

Uh Oh! Another removal of Anti-Virus software causes trouble. I have had this problem every time I have tried to remove an anti-virus program, and so has my dad. The only thing that seems to work is a format c:/. Unless of course you have a backup of your OS before you installed your AV software.

In2Photos wrote in post #3188592
Unless of course you have a backup of your OS before you installed your AV software.

System Restore?

Just to add to my last post...

I work for an IT company on the software side. Of our support engineers just came back from a client and said that several of their comps had the same Windows Auto Update issue. Working fine all day Tuesday and Wednesday, bam, all screwy on Thursday.

Dunno if that'll help you at all Tim, but it's a channel of investigation.

More info about windows patch causing computer slow downs...

http://www.theregister​.co.uk/2007/05/11/ms_u​pdate_glitch/

Thanks for the help so far guys. Just FYI i've done virus and adware scans and the system's clean. Windows automatic update is turned off, I run it manually, I have all the latest updates for SP2. I found a Kapersky removal tool which I run (in safe mode), i'll have to use the PC for a bit to see if it helped - so far so good. I'll post if the problem reoccurs

I had a similar issue with my new laptop at work today, and IT said a few others have seen it too.

I did an update to XP and seem to correct the issue, others have done a Restore to Previous..............

It seems a recent update is driving a few computers crazy. Microsoft Beta 2 process, first there is Beta then there is General Release (Beta 2)

My PC did the samething a couple of weeks ago and bam it went away after I manually update it.

The other problem I have is dirty fans and heatsinks. I recently changed the heatsink on my CPU and BAM its running much faster now.

There is also another problem that I've read about athlon CPUs. Apparently they are not able to throttle down when the CPU is overheating like Intel do.

Ephemeral wrote in post #3190610
More info about windows patch causing computer slow downs...

http://www.theregister​.co.uk/2007/05/11/ms_u​pdate_glitch/

Well, that explains the issues I am having. I hate reinstalling windows and normally have a current ghost image so if I "do" have issues I can just ghost the backup to the drive, but my image is 2 years old (too lazy to ghost the drives) and I have had too many changes to use the ghosted image.

My current XP install was done right before XP was released and has been through 3 motherboard/Proc swaps (sysprep helps when swapping main components on an already configured install.).

Since I used the Kaspersky remove script it seems ok... but I haven't used it much since, really. One day when I have nothing better to do I may reinstall XP... but it'd take a couple of days to get everything set up and working again. Anyone done that, reinstalled a 3 year old install? Much difference?

tim wrote in post #3192756
Since I used the Kaspersky remove script it seems ok... but I haven't used it much since, really. One day when I have nothing better to do I may reinstall XP... but it'd take a couple of days to get everything set up and working again. Anyone done that, reinstalled a 3 year old install? Much difference?

tim I did on my previous P4 3.0 rig a few weeks back and what a difference it made in all areas. Took the time and made sure all my important stuff was saved and away I went.

It made things quite a bit faster/more reliable then? I just did a check and i'd have to back up about 5GB, which is nothing, half a weddings worth of data. The trouble would be getting licenses and everything back onto the PC, i'm not sure where my PhotoJunction license number is - probably in a box somewhere, I moved not long ago.

I might do it later in the year, but the PC seems ok now - though it hung a minute ago it's doing it much less now. If it gets annoying i'll do it soon enough.

Ok, it's definitely still doing it. The problem seems to occur much more often when the PC's under load. Still open to any ideas