Member Avatar for Tjmahone

I'm having an issue where a computer that was seemingly working fine a couple days ago is now freezing whenever I try to click on anything on the desktop. This happens right after startup. I can sometimes get the start menu to open, but once I try to click on any icon in the start menu, it freezes again. I thought it was Kaspersky at first so I went into safe mode and turned off a ton of start up programs, but the problem still continues. I did a system restore that seemed to work for a little while but the problem continues. I can do almost anything in safe mode. I went in and copied all the documents and settings onto my external so I can move them to another computer, I have had no problem at all.

I should also note that the mouse still moves and the hard drive light still randomly flashes as if it's trying to access something. Also, the hard drive is fairly full, it's a 40GB hard drive and has about 300MB left on it. I don't know if that would make a difference, except maybe in the page file.

The computer is a Dell Inspiron 9300 running XP Professional, SP3, with 2GB of RAM.

Edited by Tjmahone because: n/a
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Good troubleshooting from and useful suggestions from , and . When Safe Mode allows Explorer to run but a normal boot hangs on clicks, the usual culprits are third‑party security software, shell extensions or leftover drivers/services that run only in normal mode. The notes below focus on safe, practical cleanup and verification steps that complement the thread’s findings without repeating them.

Start with a clean uninstall path for any security product that was removed manually. Run the vendor’s official removal utility (available from the vendor’s support site), reboot, then inspect startup items and services from Safe Mode: run msconfig, open services.msc and use Autoruns (Sysinternals) to find and disable leftover entries. Avoid deleting registry keys blindly; export a registry backup or create a disk image first.

Follow these verification steps from Safe Mode before returning to normal boot:

  • Check Event Viewer (Application and System logs) for errors around the hang time.
  • Show hidden devices in Device Manager and uninstall any orphaned drivers left by the AV.
  • Run a disk check and system file check from a command prompt:
    chkdsk c: /f
sfc /scannow

    (SFC on XP may request the original install CD.) Free up several GB of space so pagefile and update processes have room.

A final note on tools and precautions: registry cleaners and aggressive “fixers” can make recovery harder — always back up the registry or make a full image before use. If the machine will stay on XP long‑term, favor lightweight security tools and limit risky browsing, but plan to migrate to a supported OS as XP is no longer supported by Microsoft.

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Member Avatar for Rik_

What security software do you have and have you scanned with it recently?

Member Avatar for jingda

Yup, as what Rik had said it may be a virus problem. Safe your data into a external hard disk if after the virus scan fails. Then do a reformat. Have you download any apps or files from the interent recently. Some applications are harmful and cause your laptop to slow down, what is your CPU usage?

Member Avatar for Ritesh_4

try clean the system using kaspersky, and also clean the registry with a cleaner tool like ccleaner or registry mechanic to see what happens afterwards

Member Avatar for Tjmahone

I ran ccleaner and did a virus scan, tried stopping some services. I couldn't get the computer to stay stable long enough to start task manager, but found no virus anyway. In the end, Kaspersky is what was causing the problem, as long as I killed it in msconfig while in safe mode it would start fine, upon reboot Kaspersky would run again and cause the problem. I removed the program and it works fine now. Kaspersky has caused problems for me before on other machines, I usually use Microsoft Security Essentials on older machines. Thanks for your help!

Member Avatar for jingda

Well i use kaspersky and have no problem but since removing it solve your problem you should never use kasperky on an older laptop. Maybe the software is not compatible with your laptop or not stable. Try back the same softwares you have use before.

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