My Windows XP computer is locked up! Firefox not responding 
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We have an HP Pavilion computer running Windows XP. The computer is used mostly for web browsing using Mozilla Firefox, with some word processing using Microsoft Word, image manipulation using PaintShopPro. Some of the web pages are complex, with lots of graphics, layered overlays, etc. And many of the pages include music streaming.
The system has what should be plenty of memory for these minimal application (768 MBytes) and the processing speed is 2.6 GHz. Nonetheless, every so often, after maybe 50 hours of active use, the computer will lock up, often when loading a web page.
While XP is a much more stable operating system than earlier home-user oriented versions of Windows (for example, Windows 95 and Windows 98), XP can still get bogged down over time, such that the only fix that restores the computer to its standard performance is a reboot. Programmers and professionals know what to do, of course. So this entry is really for beginners.
If your XP computer appears “locked up” or frozen, don’t just hit the power button and turn the computer off. That could cause big problems, including corruption of files on your hard disk drive. Instead, perform the following procedure:
1) hold down the Ctrl key and the Alt key, ane press the Del key; this should bring up the “Windows Task Manager” (if the task manager window doesn’t pop up, you may have to power down using the on/off button, unfortunately)
2) Use your left mouse button to click and hold “Shut Down” at the top of the Task Manager window; this should show you a pull-down menu listing the various shut down options
3) Move your mouse pointer down the list and click “Restart”
Windows should go through all the running programs and force them to exit, then proceed through an orderly power down sequence, making sure the disk drives are all properly synched before the power is turned off.
Then the system will reboot, and you should find yourself with an XP system that has returned to its standard performance characteristics.
Their comments
1. Margaret Says:
May 18th, 2006 at 10:11 am e
My computer locks when I am hooked up to VPN in order to access my work network from home. It does not even allow for the ctrlaltdel choice. Cursor, keyboard etc are all frozen and I have to use the power button. This happens only when I am using VPN
[copied from eQuickFixes.com] () - 22 10 06 - 07:13
try uninstalling and reinstalling the VPM client software
geek () - 14 12 06 - 23:50
