I am really in a sort of hell here. I cannot get my 3 month old Toshiba notebook to shutdown/restart normally, and I have lost almost all functionality. It hung up on the process DLACTRLW.EXE which has to do with writing to the optical drive. I cannot get this "process" to end using Task Manager. Why not just pull the ac and then the battery and move on? When I restart after this sort of ritual suicide the reborn computer goes back to the same state where the various things that run in the background do not resolve themselves, and little to no cycle time is given to things like excel. It is impossible to access the internet, except that outlook can grab a new file if it is small. 50% of the cpu usage is for system processes and 50% is system idle processes. It is frequently accessing the hard drive, nothing positive ever happens.

Recommended Answers

All 3 Replies

I would have your system checked for viruses.

Post in the Virus forum. ;)

I would have your system checked for viruses.

Post in the Virus forum. ;)

Thanks for your interest. That there was a virus at fault is not likely, virus checking was done all the time by AVG, including email scanning. What seems to have happened, is that the program for writing to the optical drive, called Sonic, lost contol of itself over a trivial afront, - the wrong type of blank disk being inserted. I could never get this program to end, it would come back after every reboot, it would not close itself, nor could components of it be closed by task manager. The computer went down hill very quickly, soon I could not access files except in Safe Mode, ie "my computer", "my documents", "office" opens and saves would not work in normal XP. Toshiba support was of little or no help but they did always answer the phone right away. I put together an usb external drive with a kit from Compuserve and an hard drive from an old computer, (it worked wonderfully well, I'm going to make another one and they will be my redundent backup from now on), and I downloaded all my critical business files in safe mode. I was careful at first but everything went so well I was soon able to set it to work on gigabite size folders without a hitch although it took a long time ofcourse. Then I popped in the Toshiba recovery disk and set it to restore to the "out of the box state" as they called it. I then removed the afore mentioned Sonic program in all its merry guises. I am still loading on my useful programs, setting up network components, putting back tons of company records but by Wednesday morning I'll be ready to address all the things I needed to bust my fanny to catch up with on Monday. Who needs optically written cds/dvds, they don't last that long anyway, do they? Now I have my massive storage devices, the same size and heft as a compact hardback book. The weather here in Seattle has been great, so they tell me.
Anyway problem solved by capital punishment.

Anyway problem solved by capital punishment.

Well said. ;)

Well, my apologies for not being able to fix, it, but I'm happy all's good now.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.