browser hangs/freezes

[dabs]

hi
just a question for those with more knowlledge than me (thats not hard)
my computer has started to freeze when browsing, it happens with IE, firefox and opera, there does not seem to be any certain site or time scale involved the only thing to do is restart the system
I am not that techno so will give any information you might need to help me but might need help getting it off my computer
am running on vista, firefox 3.5.2 IE 8
I use avg and zonealarm and have scannned with ccleaner, quicksys regcleaner 2009, tune up utilities after checking and cleaning the problem still there
have uninstalled and re-installed firefox
and other sugestion
thanks in advance for any help

 

[techquest]

It could be it's hardware related. What network card are you on?

 

[dabs]

hi techquest
the card is :- NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
it has only started playing up the last week my mrs comp is running fine through the same modem and router so am asssuming that they are ok

 

[little_pob]

I had the same problem with my laptop running 32bit Vista HP. Anywhere from 2-5 minutes into a surfing session, regardless of the site (though more quickly on sites with .flv videos), the whole system would freeze for 20 seconds to a minute and a half.

What a lot of people don't know is that 32bit Windows reserves 1GB of RAM for system use (i.e. itself), and has done since XP SP2.

So, at a guess you are running a 32bit flavour of Vista with 2GB RAM or less?

If so the simple solution is a 64bit OS or an extra stick of RAM. If going down the RAM route don't go over 3GB on a 32bit OS it's a waste of money.

 

[dabs]

hi
thanks for the reply, seem to be the same fault but mine feezez/hangs and does not come back, have to re-boot the system then all fine again
the comp is a medion professional PC
the processor is an Intel(R) Core(TM) Quad CPU Q6600 @2.40GHz
I have 3GB of RAM
and it is a vista 32 bit-operating system
its running on service pack 1, is it worth updating to service pack 2 as the comp has been running fine before this fault I have not installed any new hardware

 

[little_pob]

You can try SP2 but I would be grabbing a copy of automatic bootup and recovery (google vista abr), backing up files and software and doing a fresh install, but of the 64bit version.

 

[maddogs]

Also if this has only just started happening use system restore and restore to an earlier time when it was ok and run task manager to see if anything else is eating resources.

 

[dabs]

mmm using abr scares me as I'm not sure what I'm doing on these things, have tried restore but it would not go back to a past date ran the file then came up restore did not work
if I do use the abr does that mean that the restore disc that came with the computer won't work again
I noticed that the system files are on a partition on the drive would re-installing vista over these sort the problem out and if I did re-install vista would it wipe out all my other files on my comp??

 

[little_pob]

It would help if I'd given you the correct definition of ABR; it stands for activation backup and restore. As such it saves the OEM activation certificates used to activate the Vista installation (and no it won't activate just 'any' Vista install either).

The Medion restore disc will revert Vista back to it's factory settings with all the OEM software installed, for ABR you'd need an unmolested Vista disc/ISO. So yes, using ABR is likely to mean the restore disc won't work, but you'd just use the 'vanilla' Vista disc in place of it.

The partition you've found the system files on is likely to be a restore partition that the restore disc uses. The restore disc might have a repair option.

You will loose your files on a reinstall as it involves a format and if the repair goes wrong you might end up needing to reformat anyway. Which ever method you take, ABR reinstall, 'Factory reset' or attempting to repair, you should always backup your files.

 

[dabs]

little_pob thanks for your reply am not sure about going that way as I'd prefer to be able to use the original disc, or as a last resort a re-format but thanks for the suggestion