Re: Can't open Items

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:05:42 -0500, Charles <cwmickey@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Christopher Muto wrote:
"Charles" <cwmickey@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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S.Lewis wrote:
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"Charles" <cwmickey@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Christopher Muto wrote:
you said 'when the problem happens'... does this mean that sometimes
the icons for the items do appear in the start menu, and sometimes
they work, but other times they do not? sounds like some sort of
resource problem or a hard drive problem. i suggest a scan of the
hard drive using the manufacturers diagnostic tool and/or a system
restore to a point in time well prior to when you first started to
notice the problem.

"William R. Walsh" <wm_walsh@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Hi!

None of these are running scans when the problem happens which
has now been noted to be just happening randomly.
You might find a clue in the processes list of the Windows Task
Manager. Sometimes a process that's doing a lot of disk churning
will
also be using some or a lot of CPU time.

William
Christopher,

The icons are always listed in the start menu but about half the time
when I click on them I get the busy hourglass for about 4-5 seconds
then nothing. I have run the hard drive diagnostic and both passed.

William,

As stated in the original post the processes list has nothing that
stands out. Even when this (drive activity light)is happening, the
system idle process is at 99%. I know something is doing something
but I just can't seem to find out what it is.

Charles
F8 at the Dell (splash) screen and boot the system in "safe mode with
networking". Click on those items in the start menu to verify
function.

If they're fine in safe mode, you might try going into
start/run/msconfig/ok/startup (items) and temporarily disabling all
startup programs.

Reboot in "normal mode" and check function of items in the start menu
again. If they're "cured", then a program or combination of programs
are likely causing your issue.

You can then go back into msconfig and enable programs individually to
find the culprit or see where the breaking point is for the system.

Sounds like a system resources issue due to software or services.


Stew
sounds like a plan... but a shorter approach might be to just uninstall
zone alarm pro and see if the problems go away with it.


Agreed. With the list of security SW's he's posted he's running the risk
of overkill depending on how all of that is configured.

It's been a long, long time since I've used ZA - but I've noted the
threads here regarding issues.
I will try the option of removing Zone Alarm later today and see what
happens. Would the option of disabling ZA work to check things out or
would I really need to remove it? I have seriously thinking about dumping
it when my paid subscription runs out and trying something else. As to the
amount of virus and spyware programs I have, only AVG Free is configured
to run daily. The others are there for manual use whenever I think about
running them which is usually every month or so.

disabling it should probably reveal if it is the culprit. follow that link
i provided above to the zone alarms support forums. there you will see many
discussions about various issues with zone alarm. they seem to have answers
for all of them but it just sounds like more effort than it is worth.
easier to just remove it and not look back.


I had a quick look at that last but will give it a better look later
today also. On another train of thought, what is the possibility of
Micro$oft issuing "fixes" that may mess up certain things on older
computer systems in a push towards 'Vista instead of XP for the masses'?
I've often wondered whether they would stoop to this level tho.

Charles


I think most of the replies you got are on the right track. I
personally dumped AVG and ZA after noticing some problems. My guess
is you have some conflicting software (likely one of the ones you
mentioned) that are fighting for a piece of cpu time or ram. To me
and based on what I've read in the past, you have too many programs
that overlap (based on what you posted earlier). Your problem might
also be caused by a bad install, file gone bad or just wrong settings.
If it were me, I'd begin to uninstall one by one, the programs you
posted earlier and see if things run better. I hesitate to say
disable them because sometimes the disable doesn't work (in my
experience) because I've seen processes still running after I
supposedly disabled stuff. I know it's a pain to uninstall stuff but
the good thing is, if you reinstall it, you can do a clean install
which might help. Personally I think I'd eliminate some of the
programs you posted earlier because it sounds like some overlap /
overkill. Right now I'm using just Kaspersky on my main laptop with
no overlapping programs and it runs well. Of course it's possible all
of this is not the culprit but it just sounds like this would be a
good first place to start to narrow down the problem. I feel your
pain tho as I have continuing minor problems too but not bad enough to
do a complete system install. Incidentally I recall years ago some
saying you should do a complete reinstall to get your registry back in
order. Not sure if that's still the best method (of course it can't
hurt) but I prefer the backup and restore method. And if you ever
solve your problem here, please backup fast !!!
.

Relevant Pages

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    ... The icons are always listed in the start menu but about half the time when I click on them I get the busy hourglass for about 4-5 seconds then nothing. ... If they're fine in safe mode, you might try going into start/run/msconfig/ok/startup and temporarily disabling all startup programs. ... I will try the option of removing Zone Alarm later today and see what happens. ...
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