Frosted screen of death

[pocketpenguin]

GRRRR, I'm not happy with Vista. Is anyone else out there experiencing what I can only describe as the frosted screen of death?

On occasion, usually when browsing with firefox, my machine will stall. The keyboard won't work, the trackpoint does move, but usually won't let me click anything. Actually, I can click on two or three things, but whatever the click is supposed to do doesn't work.

The latest episode was browsing these forums in firefox. I pressed the down arrow to scroll down the page, nothing. I right-clicked the taskbar and tried to launch Task Manager. The pop-up menu worked, but clicking task manager resulted in no, task manager. Ctrl-alt-del didn't do it either. After a couple more tries, even the pop-up menu didn't pop-up.

This was followed shortly by the circle of infinite waiting (the mouse circle thing) and finally, the whole screen kind of frosted over.

I pressed and held the power button.

This happens to me all the time! Mostly when surfing the net, often here and I can almost guarantee similar behavior when I go to www.columbiatribune.com (my local paper, online). They've got a lot of flash adds.

I'm one of those crazy people that hates to restart their computer. I hibernate and wake, repeatedly. My old XP fujitsu laptop would hibernate and thaw, repeatedly for up to a MONTH without rebooting.

I can't tell if the problem is vista or my x61t. I've got xp pro on another partition and have been experiencing lots of browser crashes, but no BSOD or complete OS crashes. Though I haven't used the xp partition very much so it could just be luck.

Anyone else?

[ryengineer]

Firefox is known for causing crashes.

The first thing most users do when they upgrade to Vista is add more memory to their machines. Bad memory modules and unstable/improperly installed drivers/software can contribute to freezes and even BSOD too.

The problems you mentioned are very common, in most (not always) cases it's the software rather than the machine itself, I suggest you use search feature on this forum to look up for similar solved issues.

[warder]

Bad memory is the biggest cause of 'issues'. So much so that Vista includes a memory checking tool:

e.g. see http://vistaultimate.windowsreinstall.c ... memory.htm

Or use http://www.memtest86.com/

I know the hang you mean... it's caused by the Desktop Window Manager (DWM.EXE) hanging. Possibly a graphics driver issue, if not a memory one.

Oh yes, I just remembered when it used to happen for me: if the disk defragmenter is running in the background and locks a massive file to defrag it, you can get that lock up. Be patient, it can clear itself in that situation after it gets though the multi-GB files (on my system VMWare image files).

[eyecon82]

i too have had this exact issue described; I contributed it to the turbo memory and ABS; I disabled both and have had no problem since

[pocketpenguin]

I've increased the threshold for the disk head park utility, making it less sensitive. This seems to have helped considerably. I haven't crashed in days.

But then I also haven't gone into tablet mode, which seems to have been one possible factor.

I haven't touched turbo memory/ready boost, I don't know if it is working or not, I suppose it is.

[elee123]

i had the frosted screen problem as well. It started with the ati screen flickering problem, so I installed powerstrip as recommended in another thread. This would cause my computer to freeze like yours after about 5 minutes of firefox use. I since uninstalled powerstrip, and no longer get any crashes. Now i can get the LCD to stop flickering by locking the computer, pressing switch user, and then loging back in which seems to reinitialize the display. Sometimes this has to be done more than once in a row, but eventually the LCD stops flickering. Hope this helps...

I'm running a T42 with ati 9600

[Jas]

i too have had this exact issue described; I contributed it to the turbo memory and ABS; I disabled both and have had no problem since

Forgive my density, but what is ABS? Thanks.

[sugo]

eyecon82 probably meant this (ABS as Air Bag System):

http://www.pc.ibm.com/ca/think/thinkvan ... h/aps.html

[Jas]

Ah, OK. Makes sense. I read in another forum that updating the Intel TurboMemory and Matrix Storage drivers solved someone's problem, so I've tried that out. I'm tempted to do the clean install, but the laptop's already heavily configured, so that's a job I don't look forward to. Also Uninstalled Diskeeper (I'll use something else and do it manually) and I'll look at the APS to see what the settings are.

[eyecon82]

i too have had this exact issue described; I contributed it to the turbo memory and ABS; I disabled both and have had no problem since

Forgive my density, but what is ABS? Thanks.

Sorry, I meant APS, which is the active protection system....also the airbag system

[thaug]

I'd also point to the APS app as a possible culprit. I usually am stationary when using the laptop, so the need for shock protection is usually limited. However, in those occasions where the laptop got jarred, it has frozen up like this. I was actually working in Word 2007 the last time this happened. Only recourse was to forcefully shut down the computer.

I'll look at making APS less sensitive.

Firefox has developed a few memory leaks recently. One of the bigger goals for the 3.0 release is to fix as many of these leaks as possible.

[stkris]

This happens to me all the time! Mostly when surfing the net

Anyone else?

I have the same problem I think. The lockups happen in MSIE, in Opera and in the file explorer. When its the file explorer it usually hangs while the green progress bar in the path field keeps on rolling.

I've let it ride for a while, but the lockup never resolves itself.