"...is not responding" AGHHHH! How do I get rid of it?

jenniewb

I think I am now ready to throw my computer out of the window of my 5th floor flat. Its driving me MAD!

I get an error message in the title bar of many programmes way too often- we're talking about 10 plus times a day.
The message reads (input name of programme here) is not responding.

I can then click on the screen and am then asked by windows if I want to close the programme or wait for it. On the odd rare occasion I can click to wait and it starts up again, but its only about 20% of cases. I click to close and windows tells me that its reporting the information. (To who??! its not as if they've dealt with the problem!)

I have AVG anti virus but its been happening way before this was added. I also do regular update checks but things never get resolved, the problem still remains.

To memory, the programmes this has so far happened on have been:

Napster where it happens about every 10 minutes or more. It seems to de-code my system as I then get a message from Napster each week telling me I have downloaded Napster on 3 computers and as its my max I have to wait 30 days to download new music (I end up calling customer services and it gets sorted that way)

Apple Itunes where I end up having to shut the whole thing down and go back the next day.

Various websites, sometimes this one, sometimes magazine websites, sometimes my email web page.

MS office programmes (Excel, Word, you name it, it happens). Open Office programmes (hence my updating to microsoft windows)

I feel like I'm going mad with this! I am so sick and tierd of the computer doing this- and would welcome any suggestions on how to get rid of the "not responding" message!

BritRael

If you figure this out, you'll become a millionaire overnight!!

Unfortunately this stuck-in-a-continuous-loop is one of the joys of Microsoft. It can even happen quickly after a clean install so it is very difficult to troubleshoot and isolate a particular problem in your system.

There is only one guaranteed fix that I know of for this problem; buy a Mac!!

photodgm

Some questions and a suggestion. What is your operating system? How big is your hard disk and how much free space is on it? How much system memory do you have? Do you have many programmes loading at start up?
Do you get the problem more when you have multiple programmes running and/or multiple browser windows open?

Now the suggestion - Back up your data, find some time, then read the malware removal thread and follow the instructions in the first 4 posts.

Laz123

A few more suggestions:

Check in Device manager for any yellows
Run a sfc
Go into Event Viewer and look for any errors and give us the codes.

M4RKM

i'm sure this was a problem, and windows 7 was your idea, and therefore solved it..

oh hang on, no, it's still a feature in windows 7....

On a serious note, it's always worth cleaning up your computer on a regular basis, and if you haven't, back everything useful up to an external hard drive (music etc), restore everything back to factory settings, and then start again...

you can also run things like cccleaner, but i find the above method much more thorough if you have never done anything like that before and your laptop is over 12 months old.

Also, what you could consider is a ram upgrade. how much do you currently have?

M

aliEnRIK

Obvious things to check for are nasties and what you have running in the background ~
Download MALWAREBYTES (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/
Open malwarebytes and goto UPDATE and click 'check for updates'. After its updated goto SCANNER and click PERFORM FULL SCAN then click SCAN
Post the log COMPLETE here AFTER youve deleted everything it finds


reboot

Download HIJACK THIS (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/
Click DO A SCAN AND SAVE A LOGFILE (Takes seconds) then post the log so we can see whats running
(do NOT do anything else with Hijack but scan and post the FULL log)

afclegend

Sounds like a process is eating your memory up, i had this quite often when macafee virus scan was running a process called scan32.exe would run and this was very memory hungary, when it comes up again check all your processes (crtl, alt del then task manager) and see what is using up your cpu time the most during this and kill that task.

jenniewb

photodgm wrote: »

Some questions and a suggestion. What is your operating system? How big is your hard disk and how much free space is on it? How much system memory do you have? Do you have many programmes loading at start up?
Do you get the problem more when you have multiple programmes running and/or multiple browser windows open?

Now the suggestion - Back up your data, find some time, then read the malware removal thread and follow the instructions in the first 4 posts.

For the Questions!
I have Vista home, 32-bit, windows defender is off as AVG doesn't seem to like it on. (problem began before I did this btw)
I have 12 programmes at start up (but the problem doesn't just happen at start up it happens all the time!)
I have apparently 1GB of memory (RAM) and 1800 Mhz speed
And I have to say it doesn't matter if I have one programme or 17 programmes on- the same thing happens. Several times an hour- either its getting worse of my patience is fast running out. It could be both!!

I guess I'll need a separate box to back everything up- are these reduced in the Jan sales? (am willing to do ANYTHING to resolve the issue atm! throwing my computer against the wall feels like it may improve the situation! Logic tells me no but it feels like it would be a good idea...or maybe this would just resolve my feelings about the issue!!)

dizziblonde

In the end I bought a new PC (the lure of new and shiny is always too much for me with techie stuff - I never buy clothes or shoes but show me a shiny new laptop in a cute colour and I'm reduced to girlie mush) but a friend suggested to me that it was Firefox causing my problems on my old one - which was about as bad as yours seems to be. Apparently the updated autoguessing toolbar part of Firefox is constantly keeping track of whatever you've visited and really slows down if you're online as much as I am - I've knocked my history of sites visited down to something like 20 days from the default 90 in an attempt to reduce it. Other than that - have you done the whole scandisc and defrag thing that I always MEAN to do and never quite get round to?! Plus the whole scan for spyware/viruses etc and have a look exactly what you've got on start up and in your system tray.

photodgm

Firstly I'm not a Vista expert - I plan to go from XP to Windows 7 - but 12 programmes at start up seems a lot to me do you really need them all loaded all the time eating away at the system resources? 1GB of memory seems very low to be running Vista and a number of programmes. My best guess and it is a guess, is that with the low value of the pound and VAT going up, Jan sales for external drives will not get you a much better price than now.

edgex

only 1GB of memory? thats an issue right there
i have a 2yr old laptop that was 2GB of memory as standard


what have you got running on startup?
12 programmes is a lot, can you provide a list of them?