Computer Hangs briefly

[physicsguy1]

My wife's computer Is Custom built with an Athlon 2800XP processor. Operating system Windows XP Home with Service Pack 1 and all available updates to present (7/27/2004). Recent program installed Norton SystemWorks 2004. When she is typing in Word, Excel, or Outlook Express and when she is playing Free Cell or MooShu tiles, the program infrequently hangs or hesitates for a second or two before carrying out the task. Perhaps one of ten or twenty mouse clicks "hangs." Maybe one in fifty key strokes "hangs" also. She uses Spy Killer and we have a firewall. We're networked and have been for mor than a year but my computer shows no problems. I've exchanged mice and keyboards but the problem stays with her computer.

[Puckdropper]

Open the task list (either use ALT+CTRL+DELETE or go to Start > Run and enter "taskmgr" (without the quotes.)) and look for processes using 100% of the CPU, if you find one, that may be your problem.

If not, go to the "Performance" tab. Look at the "Commit Charge" values. If either the total or peak is greater than your physically installed memory, add more RAM or quit some programs.

[physicsguy1]

Hi,

Thanks for your prompt reply. I guess I didn’t have all the facts about the problem originally. Also I gave some bad information. My wife’s computer has Spy Sweeper and NOT Spy Killer as I had stated. Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure you’ve started me on the path to a solution. It’s clear from observing the Applications in Task Manager that some program or something is frequently (momentarily) hogging the CPU. The evidence is that the CPU usage momentarily “Spikes to 100% and then drops back to 2% or so. It shows up in performance as well both graphically and in percentage. It turns out that the problem seems to disappear after Spy Sweeper has been run. This is true whether or not Spy Sweeper finds anything. However, after the computer is rebooted, the problem returns. I guess I’m pretty well convinced that the problem’s origin is in something that’s loaded at startup. I’ll find it by process of elimination using msconfig to open the System Configuration Utility StartUp. Once again thank you.

Gary B.