Lately my computer is locking up. I check the CPU activity and it is at 100 %, when I reboot the usual suspects pop out. CCAPP, WindowsFormsParking, IExplorer and I have to end now the programs. I bought SPYERASER, I have ADAWARE and SPYBOT and they have erased all of the junk. I also used CCleaner to get rid of some stuff. I did not mess with the Registry because I do not know anything about it. It usually happens when the computer is left alone. At one point I saw the Locus~ exe or something like that, I read that it was the liveupdate from Norton but I do not know if this is the cause. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Andres

A few ideas:

- Post the question on a forum dedicated to Windows?
- Get a Mac

Regards,
Bernard

This is a bunch of BS. I work on Macs every single day, and the truth is, these computers have problems as well. In fact, they lock up more than my PCs.

Here's a story for ya. My computer at work kept locking up and was getting so bad that yesterday -- and I repeat YESTERDAY -- engineering replaced my computer with a brand-spanking-new dual quad-core 3GHz. You wanna know what? The frickin' thing is locking up already. It's so frustrating that I can't scream it to you loud enough through these written words.

So do yourself and everyone a favor, stop telling people to solve the problem by getting a Mac. That's not the solution!

Sorry for the rant, and thanks for letting me vent. I'm just trying to get some work done....on a Mac that is locking up.

Bernard I posted on several forums but none of the answers equal the stupidity of yours.

Regards,

Andres

Relax.

I do work both on Mac (mostly Tiger, some Leopard) and PCs (XP) every single day, and I find both systems to be overall stable enough. The company I work with happens to be a very close partner of Microsoft, and I do have a working relationship with them. I have to say that I appreciate working with those guys, so I am not by any means the MS basher you seem to have seen through my post.

This being said my PC is professionnally maintained by a highly skilled group of IT engineers while my Mac is maintained only just by myself. It might be the result of the applications I am running on my XP machine, but I do typically need to reboot it once a day because Outlook/IE just don't react anymore...

As far as Tiger (still in 10.4.10) goes, I have not had a single lock up since I bought my Mac Pro more than one year ago, and I deal with very large images and often run several performance hungry applications in parallel (typically Bridge, CS3, C1, PTgui and Autopano pro simultaneously) and I keep installing software all over the place. I have not noticed any drop in performance nor in stability. The only problems I had was with long period of times without shutting down the machine (like 2 or 3 weeks) where I did notice some drop of responsiveness. Rebooting once in a while solves the "issue".

So to me, Tiger is IMHO the best OS currently available. I don't see any reason not to convey this objective observation.

Cheers,
Bernard

Andres,

Relax man, it's Friday.

It was obviously a tongue in cheek answer, I do not have the answer to your question.

I was just trying to point out the fact that expecting a suitable answer about a pure IT problem from a forum devoted to photography might not be the best approach, especially if you are in a rush (which seems to be case considering the irritated tone of your post).

There no registries on Mac, and anti-virus are mostly not needed which is why I dared to make this Mac comment. Again, it was obvously not meant to be taken too seriously.

Have you considered contacting the manufacturer of your PC to request support?

Cheers,
Bernard

Hi,

What do you mean by lock up, how often does it happen?

There is a "tab" called processes in the "task manager" that would show which processes are using up resources. You can normally activate "Task Manager" by typing Ctrl-Alt-Del, but if you have a complete lock up it may be impossible to that.


Best regards
Erik

Do you have Windows Desktop search installed? I found it frequently brought my computer to a standstill. After trying unsuccessfully to configure it to change this behaviour, I just uninstalled it (and no problems since).

Andres: In Task Manager, sort the processes by CPU usage, and you can usually identify the one hogging everything.

AV software, Office journalling, indexing (as another posted mentioned) are some usual suspects. Opening Office files on a network share to edit them can also cause problems IME.

Bernard, I don´t like your sense of humour: this is obviously the work of the dastardly Mugabe, so that´ll be all right then.

Rob C

PS: As you say, it IS Friday, but as it´s just the same as every other day, with the same old staff probems, a crew that doesn´t want to leave port, moorings in Monaco going through the roof, what´s a jamming computer in the scheme of things?

Bernard sorry about the irritated answer but I have not gotten the" buy a Mac, go some where" else post in a while. The reason I posted here is because in the past I have been helped but several photographers who are also computer savvy or had the same problem.

Regards,

Andres

Thanks Erik, I did that and after pressing the CPU tab it seems it is IExplorer but Norton Suite is all over. Most of the processes are related to Norton.

I have been advise to unistall Norton because it isa resource hog.

Thanks J-land I am on W2K, I don't think I have Windows desktop search installed.
Everybody is telling me it could be Norton going silly.

Thanks Lois, I got this from another photographer's forum.

"That sounds very familiar.

Some time ago, I found that Norton would lock up while trying to obtain a Certificate Revocation List (CRL) -- part of the problem is that when there is congestion reaching the CRL server, your copy of Norton instantly goes out to try again ... the trouble is, so does every other copy of Norton in the world. In effect, it's a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. "

So you are right, Norton seems to be the culprit.

Andres -

Uninstall Spybot, AdAware and the other piece of software. They also tie up resources and can cause problems.

Norton is a known system hog, the only one we use at the office is their Anti-Virus software.

Having the whole suite running will really take up resources.

We run a network at the office and I also have one at home with just one computer. No major problems with either.

Which Windos operating system are you using. We have XPPro on most of the machines but my workstating uses 2000. The one at home has XPPro too.

Also, are you up to date on all of the security patchs from Microsoft?

Jay

I have had excellent results cleaning my registry with error killer

http://errorkiller.com

I deselect startup programs though.
I stoped using Nortons a few years ago and am very happy with AVAST home edition not the resource hog that Nortons was.
AVAST home edition is free!!!!

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html



Marc

I recently moved to Mac (MBP) and do like the system. However, I replaced many of Leopard's free software. IMO, they are very weak--iDVD, Mail, Safari, etc. As to stability, I get as many spinning discs from Mac as hourglasses from XP. Both systems lock-up and required to be shutdown. Finally, MS has far more software titles and prices are on MS's side.

All said, I would not change back. I've long ago come to the conclusion that computers hang-up and crash, it part of life. Also, as I get older, I use few software programs; so, the massive number of offering for MS are not a big sell. In the end, Mac seems to integrate better in a home network, and from program to program. Then there is the elegance and thoughtful design that Apple brings to its produce line.

When my Dell XPS desktop dies it will be replaced with Mac's biggest and best desktop.

Best thing to do at this point is to back everything up and do a fresh install,after formatting the disk. Everything will run better and faster, unless there is a hardware problem. If you had a virus or root kit attack this is the only way to solve the problem.

Two useful laws of software writing:

1. All non-trivial programs contain at least one bug.

2. It is a sufficient condition of program triviality that it have no bugs.

Sometimes a philosophical approach and a shrug improve perception of life, if not life itself.

Jeremy

Here's a link to a good read, I learned a few things from this my self.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/downloads/...things_dumb.pdf