Simple Computing

I thought that I'd start writing about what's going on with my PC. I'm no expert, but I do have a reasonable amount of basic knowledge, and do like to find the solution when I get a problem. Right now my problem is one that is fairly common, once maybe twice a day my computer slows, often freezes for anything between 30 and 90 minutes. Windows Task Manager shows CPU usage at 100%.

My PC is quite old; 450MHz Pentium3, 512MB RAM. I'm running XP Pro SP2. I have four hard drives installed, with my OS and software having their own drive. I also use Linux, but that's another story.

My internet connection is by wi-fi. We have a free public system here; the only downside is that each session is limited to an hour, although I can usually get back in straight away again. But it makes the freeze ups very annoying, particularly when I'm attempting a large download, or want to use Skype.

The freezing is clearly caused by one of the background applications. Others who have the same problem (and there are an awful lot out there!) seem to feel that it is either the antivirus software (I use Symantec) or possibly Windows Automatic Updates. For the past few weeks, I have been running with both turned off, and haven't had any further problems. I do have a good backup system, so am pretty confident that I could survive a virus. But if only for my own satisfaction, I am going to turn one on at a time, try and identify the culprit, and then the reason why this problem has suddenly occurred; I ran for a long time with both on and no problems whatever.

I'll post more when I'm a little further on with this.