Weird Freezing Problem...

[Dieter Laser]

I'm running ME on my computer and for a long time now I've had this problem where my computer freezes. The thing is it only does this between midnight and about 3 AM for some reason. It will suddenly freeze up with this little distorted line going across the very top of the screen. Sometimes I can press a button and it'll go to the blue screen saying 'system is busy' and then I can hit another button and it will go back to normal like nothing happened. But most of the time it becomes unresponsive and I have to hit the reset button on the computer.

I just find it odd that it would always do it within that time frame. The only other time I've seen that distorted line across the top of the screen was when I accidently pulled out the USB cable for my camera without clicking on the little USB icon first.

Any ideas what it could be? It's just starting to get a little bit old because I can't run any programs during the night since that tends to mess everything up. Thanks in advance.

[MacPC]

Hi,

More info is needed, What PC? What OS? What were you doing at the time? What did you have for dinner? j/k   etc.

Do you have any scheduled task(s) running around that time frame? Try this may help, around the thim it freezes, restart the PC in Safe Mode any keep it running in Safe Mode, see if this happens.

MacPC

[Dieter Laser]

Lets see its an AMD Sempron(TM) 2400+ with 256 MB ram and it's running windows ME. The graphics card is a few years old, a Geforce 2 mx400. Everything else is attached to the board so I'm not sure about that.

I don't know about scheduled tasks, it doesn't matter what programs are running it will do that EVERY night between midnight and approx. 3 AM and it's been doing that for a a few months now. I forgot it also does it sometimes when I try to shut down/restart the computer. When the programs start to shut down it will freeze up with that same distorted line on the top of the screen.

Sorry I'm not much of a computer guy, I'll try and get more info if you need it.

[Raptor]

Scan for viruses and spyware.

Get the latest updates for Windows ME as well.

[patio]

For checking schedules go to Control Panel and click on Scheduled Tasks...it could be either defrag or possibly your AV program updating.

patio.  8-)

[Dieter Laser]

Did it again last night but I caught it this time, hehe. But it doesn't look like there is anything in scheduled tasks that could be doing that.

[MacPC]

Knowingly or unknowingly, there's got to be a scheduled task going on. It could be an anti virus program, could be a disk back-up program, Windows scheduled update or even a virus, spyware adware planted on your pc without you knowing it.

Start your PC in Safe Mode, then do as Raptor suggested, run a complete virus  and spyware adware scan first, then go to Add/Remove Program and find out if you have any disk back-up and/or anti-virus programs installed, if so go to the program to change the scheduled time or simply uninstall them for now (you can always reinstall them later.). clean the registry then restart your pc again in Safe Mode.

MacPC

[ale52]

Do you have any power issues at your house / is the system on a battery backup?

Alan <><