odd problem with XP on laptop

M

mord

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
377
A friend brought an Acer laptop over asking me to help them. I booted it up (went pretty fast) but once it gets to the desktop it slows down VERY fast 1-2 seconds and all inputs freezes. no response from keyboard or mouse at all. I could just barely get up proc manager and everything there looks fine. The CPU usage hovers around 50-60% I thought that was odd. There is very little loaded on the machine. Mem usage was right at 300 meg used out of 512.
Note that only inputs freeze cpu usage continues to update as does the wireless signal indicator.

My first thought is malware of some kinda maybe. I tried booting into safe mode same effect. I tried using a copy of UBCD (a live win XP CD) and it does the EXACT same thing on the laptop. boots to desktop then inputs freeze. Linux live CDs work fine. No problem at all. DOS boot disks ran fine as well. I ran several memory tests, CPU tests, and hard disk scans. All ran fine no errors. So I tried reloading XP on the machine. No dice. Soon as a screen comes up that requires user input the mouse response dies within a second or two and the keyboard response is out as well. I tried running the UBCD (live XP) with the laptops HD removed. Same effect.

Anyone have any ideas? At this point it seems to me there is some kind of hardware failure that effects MS XP but not DOS or any of several linux live distros I tried? I even tried 2 different XP installs one from a OEM home CD the other a distorbution Pro CD (yeah its legit I own a buisness).
 
300MB of RAM usage at the Desktop? Good lord... and you're wondering why it's slow when it gets there? :)

You said you tried a reinstall of XP - does that mean you reinstalled from the factory restore CD or you did a true clean install with just an XP CD itself and no factory OEM bloat software or crap?

That sounds suspiciously like a situation I had recently. I sold off an iMac and as part of the deal I got an Acer laptop with it: Turion64 machine with 512MB of RAM. I did a factory restore with the Acer recovery CDs and after it was all said and done it was sucking down about 315MB at the Desktop of the 512MB stock RAM.

Needless to say that wasn't acceptable so I whipped out a fresh XP Pro NFR copy I've had for a few years now unused and did a clean install of just the OS. Installed the necessary drivers that I'd downloaded direct from Acer to a USB thumbdrive, and when it was finally finished it would boot to the Desktop in 18 seconds (I hit it with Bootvis also, standard procedure for me) and consumed 96MB of RAM. Not bad for 512MB of RAM and a 4200 rpm hard drive.

Take a peek at the System Tray on that Acer: if there are more than 2 or 3 icons (the Volume icon, the NIC or wireless icon, and really that should be about it) then that's part of the issue. The Acer I had, after the factory restore, had 9 icons in the Tray, each of them a tiny application of its own, each of them requiring more time to boot to the Desktop, each of them sucking down RAM and slowing the overall performance dramatically.

Sounds like that laptop your friend brought you needs a good gutting and clean install, but that's just my suggestion.

ps
One last thing: if it is an Acer like the one I had and finally sold, it'll probably be based on the SiS chipset, and that's not a good one. It can't do a lot of multitasking very well, and the crappy Mirage onboard graphics are pretty horrid as well...
 
I tried 3 dif XP installs.

1. Factory restore CDs (uses Symantic ghost image)

2. XP home install from a retail XP home CD.

3. XP pro install from a Distrobution CD used to install XP for corporate settings.

They all lock up as soon as the keyboard or mouse goes active in setup.

Even running a Live CD version of XP (runs compleatly from CD not on HD at all) it freezes soon as you can move the mouse or use the keyboard.

HOWEVER linux runs dandy on the laptop. Thats what really confuses me.
 
Acer brand is really notorious for having problems which can best be labeled 'mystical'.

I know several IT admins who have forbid purchasing Acer hardware due to numerous problems with them. I really don't know what is so special with them but my own experience backs it up too.
 
The total cpu utilization runs at 50-60% I don't have enough time to switch over to the individual process listing before the inputs freeze. I could just barely get a ctl-alt-del in and choose task manager before its completely halted. It is still on the apps tab. Nothing shows for running applications
 
Since the machine itself isn't locked up, can you try to remote desktop to it? Have you tried a usb keyboard instead of the built-in one? Pretty strange problem I must say.
 
Can't get in long enough to enable remote desktop. Don't have a live CD with it preconfigured either.

Have not tried an external keyboard or mouse shoulda thought of that.

Either way, spoke to Acer on the issue and they are aware of it. They say it is a known issue with the motherboard. They will be happy to repair it for $600 plus shipping both ways... The laptop only cost $450 2 years ago when it was new.

Ah well, I am loading up Linux on it for my friend. Gonna do Ubuntu 6.10 I think. Should be a good start in Linux for her. Shes just gonna use it for browsing the web and writing email.
 
Sounds like you my have a hardware problem ,but maybe not . do you no how to take the ram out and just re-install it ? also I would go into safe mode with adware ,spybot ,and your virus software that you have . Has it taken a jolt of any kind ? Is he the original owner .Do you no how to do a System file checker ( scannow sfc ).
 
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