For a long while now, I've been having issues with my system completely locking up and requiring a hard restart soon after logging into XP. I'm the only user on my PC, and I have my account password-protected, so XP automatically takes me to the standard login screen. After typing in my password, most of the time the system loads the desktop fine. Once in about every 5 or so logins, though, the system freezes several seconds after loading the desktop. It's not even noticeable at first, either; I'll be moving my mouse around, seeing the icons on the quick launch menu highlight, but when I go to click on one of them, on the Start menu, or on a desktop shortcut, the thing locks up. Just about all of the time, after a hard restart, it loads up fine, but once in a while, I might have to do it twice or even three times in a row. Also, on rare occasions, the thing locks up just after me hitting "Enter" after entering my password. Other than that, I'm experiencing little to no abnormal behavior with the system.
I did have an issue a few months ago with a critical system file being seemingly randomly deleted; inexperienced as I am, I was unable to use Windows Recovery, so I ended up re-installing XP over my existing partition, in order to preserve my files. As I'm sure you know, that was a mistake.
None of my programs were working properly, and my user account was all borked, but the thing held together long enough for me to re-install some CD-burning software, back up all of my documents, and then do a full reformat and re-install. This freezing problem existed both before and after the reformat, although I'm almost positive it wasn't happening when I first got the system this summer; my memory isn't too good on that point, though.TechPro tried to help me out over AIM; he looked at my registry and suggested disabling a few startup programs, but nothing worked. He also recommended upgrading just about every driver from the system from Dell's support site for my particular PC; however, even upgrading the BIOS (which went without a hitch) didn't solve the problem.
I know you're wondering about system specs, so here they are: a Dell Optiplex GX280 running XP Pro, a P4 3.0 ghz chip with H/T, 512 megs of RAM, an ATI Radeon X300 64 meg video card, and a Creative Soundblaster 24-bid sound card. If you need anything more in-depth, like about my motherboard for instance, and can tell me where to find out, I'll gladly do so. Right now, the only startup services I have running are the free version of ZoneAlarm, McAfee Virus Scan Enterprise 8.0 (provided by my school), and some Creative software that replaces the standard Windows volume control.
I know you're all saying, "It's a Dell;" yes, I realize that.
It wouldn't be my first choice, but I don't yet have the technical knowledge/confidence to build my own system, and I got a pretty good deal on it through my college, so I went for it. Just to let you know, I'm a college freshman with absolutely no job, so unless it's absolutely necessary to the survival of the system, any hardware updates are out of the question. It runs well enough for what I need it, and I'm not willing to spend any substantial amount of money on it. I have finally decided, though, that this will be the last system I buy pre-made; next time, I'm taking the plunge and building my own, hopefully with a crap-load of help from the members of this forum. Anyway, I'm absolutely stumped on this one, and while it's only a minor inconvenience, it's enough of one to make me want to get it fixed, so any help that anyone can provide is greatly appreciated.P.S. While this may or may not be related to the freezing problem, I'm also having an issue with Windows remembering my monitor settings. Most of the time, when I restart the system, the refresh rate defaults back to 60 hertz; I then have to change the settings around to get it back to 100. Also, while my monitor is a Dell M993s and I have repeatedly installed the drivers for it, Windows always reads it as "Default monitor," instead of the actual model. Along with this, it greys out the "show only refresh rates that this monitor supports," but even if I choose a higher refresh rate, the actual reading on the monitor never gets higher than 100 hertz. I recently upgraded to the latest Catalyst drivers, and while the situation resolved itself for a while (the monitor was read as a Dell M993s, and the refresh rate was saved), it has since returned to its annoying ways. (The monitor has a VGA cable, but it uses some sort of adapter to hook into the vid card. I can't remember the abbreviation for this, but it's the one with all of the metal prongs.) This problem is not original to the computer; it didn't happen at all before the reformat and even for a while after it. It's extremely annoying to turn on the thing and notice the screen flicker, not to mention having my right-hand scroll bars off the viewable window, until I change the refresh rate. Once again, if anyone could help, I'd greatly appreciate it.
