BleepingComputer.com: Windows Explorer Stops Responding, Forced To Reboot...

Hi there. I'm new to bleeping computer so I'll try to explain as best I can the problem that I'm having.

Yesterday while using Microsoft word, my laptop (Dell Vostro 1700) stopped responding. The weird thing was that I was able to move the mouse still, though clicking on things did nothing, and winamp was still running and playing music. Nothing else was responding though, I couldn't Alt-Tab to anything, Alt-F4 didn't work, neither did the windows button, Ctrl-Esc didn't work and even Ctrl-Alt-Del had no effect. In the end I was forced to power down the laptop by holding the power button down. Restarted fine and a few hours later it did the same thing, so this time I used the stop button (on the front of my laptop) which stopped winamp from playing music. When I did this the mouse stopped responding so I couldn't even move it around and I was again forced to power down the laptop.

My specs are:
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System Information
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Time of this report: 6/17/2008, 19:04:04
Machine name: MONSTERMACHINE
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Vostro 1700
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A02
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Memory: 3070MB RAM
Page File: 1395MB used, 4947MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode


Every time it has happened, I was running BOINC (which is running a climateprediction.net model), winamp (playing music - not idle), last.fm client, microsoft word (2007) and firefox. My NOD32 anti-virus is also running in the background. Asides from those I don't think anything else that would affect it, there are the obvious dell laptop apps running too.

As far as I recall I don't think it is an update that has caused this as I hadn't updated anything for a few days and even that was a minor update.

Not sure what could be causing it so any input would be appreciated. If there is any more information needed, let me know.

Thanks for your time.

I'd first check your Event Viewer for errors around that time. Go to Start and type in "eventvwr.msc" (without the quotes) and press Enter.
Open up the Windows logs section and check the Application and System logs for errors around the time of the freezes.

You also may want to check the Reliability Monitor for events that happened on that day. Go to Start and type in "perfmon" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Expand the Monitoring Tools and click on Reliability Monitor.

Finally, you can get a quick performance report on your system by going to Start and typing in "perfmon /report" (without the quotes) and pressing Enter. Let us know what you find and we can move on from there.

Ok, I was gonna check out the event viewer when I noticed a couple of things. I've screenshotted them:





Started happening today. Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Ok have done as you ask. There does appear to be a recurring error though I'm not sure whether these were around the time of the freeze-ups.

According to the event viewer, the source is 'netbt' and it is a system error. The general description is as follows:

Initialization failed because the driver device could not be created. Use the string "001D09A4018A" to identify the interface for which initialization failed. It represents the MAC address of the failed interface or the Globally Unique Interface Identifier (GUID) if NetBT was unable to map from GUID to MAC address. If neither the MAC address nor the GUID were available, the string represents a cluster device name.

There was also other errors:

Faulting application msnmsgr.exe, version 8.5.1302.1018, time stamp 0x4717a53b, faulting module RichEd20.dll, version 5.31.23.1228, time stamp 0x4791a775, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0001e469, process id 0x1490, application start time 0x01c8d0c9f44ffd90.

but these weren't around the time of the freeze-ups.

Thanks.

This could be a malware problem or a problem with your TCP/IP settings.

I'd try a couple of these free, online scanners to see if anything has slipped by your protection:
(Be advised that some of these scanners will pickup things in "quarantine" from other anti-virus programs - so review the results carefully)

http://housecall.trendmicro.com
http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner Scan Only - no removal
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
http://onlinescan.avast.com/
http://ca.com/us/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

<links compiled on 02/14/2008>

Post back with the results of the scans and we can move on from there

Thanks for the advice usasma but I now cannot get more than 15 minutes through a scan without my laptop not responding. I'm beginning to think it may be a HDD problem but I can't check since it freezes up. Chkdsk does not find any bad sectors when it scans and I'm not sure how else to check. Any input would be appreciated.

Last time I tried to run a scan I got the following error in the event log (source was 'volsnap'):

The shadow copies of volume C: were aborted because of an IO failure on volume C:.

Also has the following error a few times (source was 'ntfs'):

The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume OS.

Any ideas. Is the HDD screwed?

Some Dell's have a built in diagnostic utility that you can access while booting.
If not, you can download a bootable hard drive testing utility from the manufacturer of your hard drive and use that to test the drive outside of Windows.

Hi there. Since Toshiba (my HDD manufacturer) does not have its own utility, I ran a bootable version of Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test, which after quick and full scans apparently found no problems (code 0x00 or something like that). I also ran a bootable version of Spinrite, which after a 3 hour scan managed to detect 5 or 6 "unrecovered" or "unrecoverable" sectors (I can't remember which it said). Strange that one utility finds something and the other doesn't unless they are scanning for different things. I ran the Hitachi DFT AFTER the Spinrite scan, so I'm not sure what to make of it. Anyone know what this means?

Thanks again!

The Hitachi DFT scan will detect bad sectors (I've seen this at work) - so I presume that SpinRite fixed them for you or marked them as unusable.

SpinRite is a very powerful utility. I've purchased a copy, but have had little opportunity to use it. I'd suggest trying out your system to see if this fixed the errors you're getting. If not, then I'd suggest using SFC.EXE /SCANNOW or a repair install to put the Windows files back where they belong.

I have run virus and malware scans and the problem seems to have been solved thanks to Spinrite, as it can now scan the whole drive without any problems. Am I right in assuming that Spinrite has marked those areas of the HDD as 'out of bounds' so that they can never be written to or read again, as opposed to fixing the bad sectors? If so, then I am faced with the dilemma of returning the laptop to have the HDD replaced (as it is still within warranty) or just to keep using it, even though whatever caused the problem might reoccur.

Thanks.

I'm not real familiar with SpinRite's operation - but it does fix what it can before marking anything as bad. Try checking the disk size in Windows against the advertised disk size to see if there's any significant decrease in capacity. Also, running chkdsk from the command prompt might yield some info about what's been marked as "bad".

As for the warranty repair - most shops will run a test like the DFT to see if the hard drive is bad. If it is bad, they should replace it. If it doesn't test bad, then most will recommend that you reinstall Windows to fix any problems. In other words, you face an uphill battle if you want them to replace the drive and it passes the DFT.

I'd recommend keeping an eye on it as is, and running the DFT again just before the warranty ends. If it fails, don't fix it - just bring it to the warranty repair center and let them fix it. (BTW - some repair shops will replace a drive even if the sectors are repairable. It depends on the management as to how the exact circumstances are dealt with)