Blarg....again
 

once again I need some serious help. My PC seems to be seriously fucked. I can start it and run it fine for about 15-20 minutes or so...then the CPU usage goes up to 100% and everything locks up. I've tried everything I know how...even used the system restore function but it's all to no avail. First off, am I totally fucked here? Second of all, can I make a backup of my hard drive without saving any potentially dangerous shit? I've tried starting it in safe mode but the same thing happens. I thought it might be a virus but I can't scan long enough to be sure. Any ideas?

i wouldn't rule a virus out. It could be anything, but my bet is just standard windows instability. For me, I have to do a reload every 4 or 5 months, just to keep things happy. How much stuff do you need to back up? I would say backup your most important things, blow your partition, do a full format (not just the quick format) and reinstall XP. First thing to do is install your virus scanner, and make sure you have the on-access mode turned on. That's where any drive that is accessed is scanned. McAfee does a real good job on this. Make sure also that your virus definition files are current up to the day. new releases come out every day.

Scan everything you reload and you should be good. Be prepared to spend a full day getting your computer unloaded and reloaded, then maybe a week to get everything back the way you want it.

Well...apparently it's back to normal? I'm scratching my head but it seems to be working ok now...which is good because I don't have the first fucking clue how to do any of the stuff you just listed.

Lol, no way. It runs for 20 minutes. I run win2k/xp pro for months at a time without rebooting and it is perfectly stable.

GT40, pretty weird that it went back to normal. Download AdAware and do the standard spyware scan. That might find something to help you out.

oi think posting about it's problems on hst fixed it ;)

i bet it's one of the services that gets fucked

sounds like my old winME problems
use it for awhile...bam...100%
I upgraded to xp and it doesnt do it anymore (now it just deletes itself)

Sounds like windows ME, most NT systems seem to run alot better (2k,xp, nt etc...) my guess is the operating its self might have been corupt. is it a laptop? if so the drive could have gotten scratched if you walked around with laptop on... or maby the processor overheats and now its cooler in the room so its alright. *shrug* `least it works now

just format ur drive and start all over. a lil formating once in a while doesnt hurt at all.