Freezing up or hanging up? Not sure what to call this problem!

[vickster]

I have an HP Pavillion computer, using Windows XP.  On the front is a green power light, below that is an orange light that comes on when the computer is "thinking" (i'm sorry, i don't know how else to describe that).  Anyway, if i happen to click the mouse when this orange light is on, my computer like freezes up, the tool bar disappears, the hourglass appears, and sometimes (not always) aol stops responding.  Sometimes it lasts just a few seconds, other times it lasts long enough that i get irritated and try alt/ctrl/del and sign off then restart aol.  This seems to be happening quite often lately.  Any ideas?  Thank you very much for any help!

[JJ 3000]

How much free space do you have on your hard drive?
Do you have any virus protection?

[vickster]

I think i've got about 71% free space, and i have McAfee thru aol.  I don't think i said previously that sometimes it starts doing this "thinking" thing for no apparent reason, when i do alt/ctrl/del and the task manager comes up, it will show only aol and not anything else running.

[mroilfield]

Since you mentioned AOL three times does this only happen when AOL is running? If so have you tried to reinstall/update it?

[vickster]

I recently reinstalled aol, it was doing this both before and after the reinstall.  And i don't know if it only happens with aol, i hadn't thought about trying to sign in to explorer and see if it happens again, but i will try that now, thanks for bringing that to my attention!