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Laptop hangs in intervals.

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by jneisess 1 view

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I'm having some trouble with my laptop hanging for about 10 seconds at varying intervals--usually between 5 and 20 seconds. I have worked it down to being related to my ethernet connection as it ceases shortly after unplugging the cable. I've checked for viruses and ran checkdisk (XP Pro. by the way) without results. There's also nothing pertinent in the event log. At first, I thought it was triggered by a specific program, but it continues to "appear" while using various programs. Thanks in advance guys.

6 replies

by captbilly1eye

When you say you 'checked for viruses,' what did you use?
Your symptoms do sound somewhat like a trojan being present.

Here are excellent tools to use:
RootKitRevealer:
http://tinyurl.com/y3hgq9
AVG's free RootKit detector and Remover:
http://tinyurl.com/35jq2t

In addition, here are some very good free on-line scanners:
BitDefender: http://tinyurl.com/aauh5 .
TrendMicro: http://tinyurl.com/2xis .

Other than that, if the situation occurs even when the system appears to be at idle, you may want to monitor what processes are running.
For that, I use Process Explorer, a free tool:
http://tinyurl.com/sjzno

Please let me know if this helps.
Good Luck.

by jneisess

I'll check out the rootkit, thanks. I forgot about those. I currently use NOD32 AV (with the latest updates) for my AV client. Just to show you an example, as well, I'm sending this reply from said laptop, and I'm having no problems whatsoever, yet. However, It's only been running for about 30-40 minutes. If all follows suit I won't begin having problems until a few more hours into the day. Thanks for the quick response, by the way. Unfortunately, this is the computer I use for work.

by captbilly1eye

...just for the heck of it.
Here are just a few ideas of other things that could cause temporary stalling/hanging. Although not related to ethernet connection, they may help, regardless.

Try turning off Indexing.
My Computer - right click C drive - Properties - General - uncheck 'Allow Indexing - Apply & OK.

Turn off AV's auto system scanning.

If using Diskeeper, disable auto defrag.

Turn off Outlook's auto send/receive.

Check Sound Events in Windows - if a WAV file is corrupt, it can cause the system to hang if a Windows event is tied to it. Control Panel - Sounds & Audio Devices - Sounds tab.

Disable all Scheduled Tasks. Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Scheduled Tasks.

I hope this helps.

[It is greatly appreciated if you tag all useful responses as 'Helpful' by opening those posts and clicking the 'Mark Helpful' button at the bottom. That way, people with a similar situation in the future will be able to quickly see what ultimately helped. Thanks.]

by jneisess

Sorry that I haven't replied back. You know how holidays are. I'm actually leaning towards the idea that my problem was being caused by the program mIRC. I haven't opened it in a few days, and everything seems to be fine. I just started relying on Pidgin instead. Thanks for your help especially regarding the advice on rootkits.

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