BleepingComputer.com: Bizarre Vista Freeze

I have started having a very weird problem with my new Sony Vaio (about 2 weeks old). Configuration follows:

Sony Vaio laptop, Model PCG-8112L
3GB RAM
Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.1 GHz (T8100)
Windows Vista with all current updates applied

I have WebRoot SpySweeper and Norton 360 installed. No warnings.

A few hours ago, my computer appeared to be frozen, but it was an odd freeze - the cursor still moved, but clicking on a window or on the taskbar did nothing. I then discovered that a few windows were actually still working, but I couldn't click on or switch to the ones that appeared frozen. I have installed no new software, haven't downloaded any porn (at least not that I know of) or anything else likely to cause a problem like this. I rebooted and encountered the exact same problem.

One additional oddity - if I start Task Manager, everything appears to go back to normal, at least for a while.

I often have a number of applications running, typically some combination of the following:

Word
Excel
Outlook
Skype
MSN Messenger
J2 Fax
Windows Media Player

I have no idea where to start here - any comments/suggestions would be much appreciated!

...dan

Just a thought, could you maybe have a scheduled Norton scan running at the same time? They can really bog your system down with other programs running.

I don't think that's it - yes, Norton did a scan, but this has now happened 4 times, at different times of the day.

...dan

Some suggestions:

1) Leave Task Manager running with the Processes tab visible. If it starts to lock up you may be able to see some activity that will clue you in on what's wrong.

2) Check your Event Viewer for errors around the time that it locks up. Go to Start and type in "eventvwr.msc" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Expand the Windows Logs entry by clicking on the + sign next to it, and then check the Application and System log files for errors around the time that the freezes occurred.

3) Go to Start and type in "perfmon /report" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Let it generate the report and then look for any red x's that it shows.

Let us know what you find out and we can work from there.

Thanks - will try these things and let you know what happens.

A little more information - I did look at the Processes tab when the problem occurred, and in fact looked up every process whose name I didn't recognize, and there was nothing strange there. I also ran an AdAware scan - I have been using WebRoot, which I wasn't familiar with but used it because it came preinstalled. AdAware found 257 (!) tracking cookies and one other threat that I should have written down but didn't. I have removed all of these.

Regards...dan

Dan, if you are able to you could just do a few verification online scans to double check norton and webroot

I really like bitdefender.com and pandasecurity.com online scans (do both if you can).

Or try housecall 6.6 by trendmicro.com

All 3 online scan's will give you the ability to remove also.

If you want just a quick check up (e.g. less than 5 minutes) you can do nanoscan.com which was created by panda security, however the active scan from the main website is much more thorough.

We're all in the same boat with Vista problems -_-

My problem is similar yet more severe! A window popped up recommending me some viaual optimizations... I forgot whether it was actually a vista update or tuneup utilities. Either way, after it did the optimizations and rebooted, Windows still loaded normally but I lost the cursor on the screen and the keyboard didn't work . Safe booting didn't solve the problem , and I had disabled system restore ages ago, so that wasn't an option either... The only way I could have little access to the laptop was by using the recovery disk and use the dos prompt. I am going to try installing Vista again, maybe it will overwrite and repair windows. As the repair on the recovery disk didn't help solve the matter either. The only thing worrying me is if I loose all my data on the hard disk because silly me, I didn't do a backup when the going was good! That'll teach me!