My PC specs are in my profile but here's the basics. HP Pavilion a600n AMD Athlon XP 2800+ CPU.
We have one of those surge protector/power strips with the backup battery. So, yesterday, my cat somehow managed to press the power BUTTON (stupid design (no switch too easy to press)) on the surge protector so the two computers in our room were shut down hard (like a power outage). Both of them boot up fine, including the one i'm using right now, but the other loses responsiveness when you try to run a program on it. It varies how long it will stay stable, but eventually the running program will stop responding, then much of the time task manager can't shut down the program either by ending task or ending the process. When you try End Task, "dumprep.exe" appears in the processes list and uses all of the CPU capacity it can get (up to 100 percent if it can) and just sits there doing nothing, just heating up the processor. You can end this process and CPU usage goes down to around 3 to 4 percent. Well after more of this crap, you can't get task manager back up again. I just discovered that if you leave things in this condition (trying to end tasks and trying to start another program) the computer sometimes eventually (10 minutes or more) will complete what you told it to do. The programs commanded to shut down actually shut down, and any program you tried to start during this, starts running. But only sumtimes. But everything is still very slow and almost completely unresponsive. If you can even get the start menu up and start doing a proper shutdown, it only get to the windows is logging off screen and just freezes there. It never shuts off. You always have to do a hard shut down. I managed to do a system restore to the previous day before the system lost consciousness, but it didn't help at all. I suspect either a hardware problem or corrupted memory. I need this piece of junk to last until I build my new PC built so could you guys help me fix this?

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Well, nobody's helped me with this problem and it's been too long, but I think i know why. Coincidently, I had a windows automatic update right before the hard shutdown. Since it's the SURGE in a POWERSURGE that is harmfull to computers and the computer's power supply has built in protection, I began thinking of other things that could have caused the problem. Now, Auto update express install is supposed to only do CRITICAL updates, but those A-holes at Microsoft hid Windows Genuine Advantage or WGA in Critical updates. I guess i could have checked, but I, like most people, just assumed it would be a CRITICAL UPDATE like security updates or something. Apparently, WGA has been causing many people's machines to freeze while loading a browser, and sometimes for different reasons. It sounds like the problem I've been having. People have to do Hard shutdowns just to turn off or reboot just like me. This WGA is an anti-piracy program that has already been hacked, but seems to conflict with many innocent people by telling them they don't have a genuine copy of windows. It hasn't done anything like that to me, but my computer still freezes up. Does anyone think they can help me now that i've provided this bit of information.

Well, I did a system restore in Safe Mode to June 25th, and that got rid of WGA. I turned off auto-updates, but i can't update at all now unless i install WGA. Since WGA seems to screw up people's systems, I think it's worth having no updates, at least untill it can run without screwing up. But it didn't help. My PC will run for a while when you start it up, but if you try to use a browser for more than a minute or, try to run a game, or try to disable the LAN and re-enable it, the computer will freeze up. It can't see any of the computers on our LAN, but it can still connect to the internet. I've found that this problem is happening to 2 of our other computers. The PC i'm using right now is the only problem-free one. I disabled Microsoft error reporting on our computers, so now I don't have a problem with dumprep.exe hogging system resources when i try to end a frozen program, but that didn't help the overall program, dumprep.exe ran fine before this ordeal. The proble with dumprep.exe is just a byproduct of the overall problem. Will somebody please help me fix this, I'm already almost certain it's not spyware/adware, or virus or trojan. Maybe a Moderator or some Techie could help me out. The moderators on this website helped me out a great deal when I had my 450 MHz machine. I could really use them now.

[Q I disabled Microsoft error reporting on our computers, so now I don't have a problem with dumprep.exe hogging system resources when i try to end a frozen program, but that didn't help the overall program, dumprep.exe ran fine before this ordeal.[/QUOTE] program in bold should actually be problem.

:mad:

Do you guys need a HJT log or something? If you do, I'll try to get one for you, but please help me out here, operating systems aren't so cheap, and right now, whiping my hard drive isn't really an option.