I been getting intermittent lockups on my computer so a while ago I started to document what was running and what time it showed on the screen when it was locked up etc. Always at 10:27pm...email program and firefox running is all for programs.

I tried looking into the admin thing for the event log and it shows nothing for any of the times it locked up. There would be nothing logged til it was rebooted.

Tried virus scans and spyware stuff already.

3/19 10:27pm
3/28 10:27pm
4/21 10:27pm

Anyone got any ideas? Bossman this is the big machine again if you see this.

Do you have a backup power supply or surge protector hooked to the computer?
Real hardware issues usually are more random than that so I'm guessing power spike...

What about a system restore to a point earlier than the first time it locked up,,,, just a thought,,,

Yes ups on the machine but I would find it hard to believe I get a surge at exactly 10:27pm every time though :hee:

Gatta I don't know the first time it did it. Could be six months ago for all I know.

i wonder if you can search for that time slot reference all by itself?

it's your only clue thus far...

open up your task manager and (ctrl + alt + del) and what your cpu stats. if its pinned something may be causing it to overheat.

is the pc well ventilated?

its not a dell gx model by chance? there is a known issue with the caps on the board to bulge and leak causing system lockups and other general hardware chaos.

be careful when troubleshooting not to get stuck on one thing. I do it all the time and it often turns out to be something else.

when it's locked only the mouse moves. You can't do anything else. You can click on the program on the screen and nothing works. No control alt delete no nada. No hard drive activity. Looks like it's just sitting there waiting for you to do something. It's not totally locked up though if the mouse still works.

If the mouse can move around, it's not really "locked up"...but "non responsive" (I think that's the term for it). That was an important thing to mention :-P
Does your antivirus program have some sort of emergency CD you can boot up from to scan your system? Sounds more like a virus now...

If it's not 10:27, can you bring up your task manager and regedit?
If you get these msgs, a virus did it:
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/06/28/restore-task-manager-regedit-and-folder-options-disabled-by-virus/

long shot.. check your scheduled tasks in the control panel.

anything start at that time?

Defrag that puppy and clean the registry.Usually fixes any xp related software issue.Weird that it only locks up at a certain time.Leads me to believe there is something else scheduled at that time like antivirus or spyware autoupdate or windows update enabled to run in the background.Check in Add/remove programs for anything installed you may not recognize and uninstall it.Sometimes certain tasks running in the background search for updates on schedules.Check what programs are running in the task bar (run:msconfig/startup) and see what programs are running.Also check service in the msconfig menu.Check the box and hide microsoft services and see what other services are running.

No scheduled tasks that I found for that timeslot.

Kenyee, yes you are correct it's unresponsive. About as unresponsive as a squirrel that just got run over and had a reset button to bring it back again :hee:

I've defrigged, defragged, cleaned, cloned, and even blew my nose every night before going to bed and it still does it when it wants to. Problem is there isn't a set schedule of it doing it except for a common 10:27 time which led me to believe it was something trying to run or update and no log for it at all.

Problem is I don't know when it started I probably could have reset the thing 10 times before it dawned on me to start logging times etc.

long shot.. check your scheduled tasks in the control panel.

anything start at that time?

run crapcleaner? http://www.ccleaner.com/

grabbing at straws here too. I'd suggest you leave Task Manager up at 10:20pm and sort it by cpu used. Hopefully it'll lock up w/ it up and it'll give you a clue...

that's not a bad idea, maybe I'll start leaving that up and see if anything happens.

another thing you could do is to download ->what's running

a free proggy thats just like the task manager but on steroids

http://www.whatsrunning.net/whatsrunning/main.aspx

10:27 pm again last nite. It's never done it two days apart from each other. Didn't open the task manager either ugh

do you have automatic updates scheduled and at what time?

I shut it off in windows and also avg antivirus.

what if you schedual something for that computer to do
at 10:26pm ............. like a defrag..

Scott - just saw this. Don't do a defrag at 10:26, probably won't hurt but I would recommend leaving that out of the picture at the moment. The nig machine - is that the one you had rebuilt by that company?

Go Control Panel, Admin Tools, Event Viewer, and look through all of the logs and look to find what hung, or what errors were in their at that time.

Does any other device (or computer) do anything or connect at that time?

This is the office machine John it's the newer box I got after that hard drive crashed on the old machine, I looked at the event viewer and there was nothing logged in there on multiple times. Defragged before and it was only 3% fragged.