New T43... windows hangs

[pipspeak]

After never experiencing any issues whatsoever with WinXP on my T40 I was rather disappointed that XP SP2 has hung about three times in as many hours on my new T43, even before I installed any major apps.

Last time it hung was after I disabled the windows screen saver. I let it sit to digest then came back 15 minutes later only to find it still frozen and the computer having got very hot as though the CPU was still churning. The time before that I think it hung when I made a Windows config change too.

Have any folks found WinXP SP2 more unstable than SP1 in general?

[GomJabbar]

I have Windows XP Pro SP2 on my T42, and it has proved very stable for me. If you have gotten involved in disabling services, you may have disabled a necessary service, and that may be the cause of your problem.

If you have connected to the internet, or put in a CD of dubious origin, you may have been infected with a virus or a worm. I knew of someone that had an infected computer the very first day of ownership. Make sure your antivirus software and spyware software is up-to-date, and do a hard drive scan in Safe Mode. You should also check your hard disk for errors. Right click on the C: drive icon in My Computer, choose Properties, then Tools, then Check Now..., and check both boxes, then Start. Finally reboot.

You can go to: Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer, and look for any events that occurred during the time of the 'hang'. While online, click on the event that shows an error, then click on the link to get more information on the error message.

[Sleepy]

Have you done any Windows updates? As soon as I did the updates my Windows became corrupted and I had to reinstall it (also brand new T43). I checked for viruses, did memory tests, hard drive tests, everything possible and everything was OK. After I reinstalled it, I didn't do any updates and everything is running smoothly.

[pipspeak]

I generally never do Windows updates to prevent the sort of problems I'm having. I think I applied only about 3 critical updates to SP1 over the years and only then after doing plenty of research on potential side effects. Good third party defenses, no IE, and plenty of common sense are my main protections from the big bad world.

All the windows processes I disabled or set to manual were the same ones I changed on the T40/SP1, so I assume there will be no unknown effects on SP2. Then again, assume is a dangerous word to use with Microsoft products.

[GomJabbar]

I generally never do Windows updates to prevent the sort of problems I'm having. I think I applied only about 3 critical updates to SP1 over the years and only then after doing plenty of research on potential side effects.

To each his own I guess.

I always apply the security updates as soon as they are available. Over the last 4 or 5 years, I've had problems twice (in W2K on a 600E). In both cases, the Update caused unusually long shut-down times. The reason? The registry hive was not unloading on shut-down. I was able to fix it in both cases by uninstalling the updates. I haven't had any problems with Security Updates on Win XP Pro yet.

In my experience, whenever you install a Windows security update, it gives you the option to uninstall it later. If this is NOT an option, you are given a warning that it is not possible to uninstall that update. To uninstall an update that causes problems, simply go to Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel, find the Update number and uninstall it.

As such, I find little reason to avoid installing Security Updates on a personal computer. The added security is certainly a plus. In a corporate environment, things are more complicated.

EDIT: I have less faith in optional Hardware Updates, and optional Windows Updates. I take a more cautious approach to those.

[skanky]

I always apply the security updates as soon as they are available. Over the last 4 or 5 years, I've had problems twice (in W2K on a 600E).

ditto, i always install the updates asap, never had problem with sp2 hosing my install and i dont reinstall very often so whatever i had when i originally installed xp, is what i had when i installed sp2 etc.