browsers REFUSING TO CLOSE
 

let me start with saying that my entire system seems a bit buggered up.
takes multiple attempts to boot up and everything is slower in loading. once it gets up and running, however, everything seems fine.
that is until firefox decides to bite the dust...hourglass and so on
so i close it. and then click on 'end task'. but it's still there, so i end the firefox.exe application through task manager. but it stays there!!!
So i open IE. And it gets similarly stuck!
All other progs seem to work fine...adaware and avg show no malicious things in my PC....Any ideas? i dont want to use the eee (this is functioning perfectly BTW) as my main computer!!

It isn't the browser getting stuck, it's something else like Adobe Acrobat plug-in. So you need to look at list of processes running and close the one that is causing the problem.

ctrl+shift+esc to bring up the task list. Check the processes and applications tab, end task to kill the miscreants. if that doesn't work, doing it from the cmd line is more powerful... type tasklist to bring up the list, then taskkill /PID 1234 where 1234 is the process ID number you see in the tasklist.

i ve done the above and the b'stards are still open!!!

I find procexp is better at killing hung programmes than taskman, and doesn;t require the 3 finger salute either.

I have a problem lately on my Mac where certain... ahem... 'exotic'... sites seem to crash Safari. I suspect it's a Flash thing. The whole computer seems to get stuck.

It's probably a browser plug-in. Disable them one at a time until you find the problem. Also, look for updates to your plug-ins, from within firefox. (updates/disable from tools/add-ons menu).

Some add-ons are more "in your face" than others. Which ones are you running?

-David

Exotic sites like FlyerTalk.com?

Do you regularly run full antivirus and anti spyware/adware scans? How old is the system -- sometime you really need to back up your date, reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system and applications.

What OS and how much RAM?

Antivirus is scheduled to run every day, sometimes I cancel it but usually it will have run every other day. I don't use Ad-Aware as often (but I used it yesterday and it found no critical items, just a few cookies). Similarly, I've run defrag within the last week.

It's 3 years old...I've had my HDD changed recently, but it was through a "phantom" copy of the disk and not properly reinstalling everything...There was nothing wrong with the old disk, it just was full and I got a bigger one...maybe new unit is a bit dodgy?


Win XP, 1.3 GB RAM.

First, I would try spybot as well. There's something not right on there. Anti-virus is nice, but it often causes systems to act like yours. My first opinion is that the problem is with the software. I would track down your XP disc, back up your data and do a repair install. That should set your system right. Perhaps first uninstall software you don't use.

If it's a hardware problem, it's not likely your hard drive, but most of the manufacturers have programs you can use to check the drives. There are also free programs out there to check your memory. Most hardware issues would leave you with OS crashes or the inability to boot.

I would also suggest you add as much memory to the machine as you can once fixed. It will work much better with 4GB of ram than it will 1GB and memory is cheap right now. A rule of thumb is that unless you do gaming, graphic design, professional work, etc, then memory is much more important than processor speed.

Absolutely
 

I had the same problem, installed SpywareBot and after removing thousands (no exageration) of spyware, the problem went away. And, I had up-to-date McAfee, which did diddly-squat to help!

Once you clean up your system, disable java, and install the noscript add-on.

I was thinking the same thing. This might be a root kit, which would explain the slow boot-up. Because Firefox accesses the internet, it might be malware that's interfering with it.

I am aware of this. Motherboard max is 2GB. Do you reckon it'll be much better than the current 1.3?