Which graphics card?

bsod

It starts with the word recently, so what changed

GolfDelta

bsod wrote: »

It starts with the word recently, so what changed

I can't recall any changes to the machine before the hanging started. I replaced the monitor after the onset of the problem and as it's a more modern unit running at 1920 x 1080 pixels I thought perhaps I was overtaxing the graphics card. Then when I was updating drivers I noticed how old the most recent ones were and a light came on in my napper. I thought perhaps the time has come to move on from XP.

I've done all I can think of. I've even disabled everything on startup in MSCONFIG leaving just the antivirus running.

bsod

if nothing obvious stands out as a potential cause, the normal diagnostic process would be to undo recent changes, look at logs and traces, or start afresh
ie

put the old monitor back on
do a system restore
reinstall antivirus
check task manager
check disk for errors
check event log
process trace

etc

or restore from a backup, or reinstall the operating system.

thumbnails slow appearance - have you been deleting the thumbnail cache (thumbs.db's?) with cclceaner

GolfDelta

I've spotted a few things in the event log which have raised my antennae and that's caused me to examine software add/remove. There were some items added round about the time this all started. They're now being deleted.

I've not come across thumbs.db before. Is it something I should untick in CCleaner?

what's a process trace?

bsod

it's the thing that makes your thumbnails display quicker

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processmonitor

GolfDelta

Process Monitor won't run on my system unfortunately. It's for Vista and higher. I'm on XP Pro SP3.

bsod

they've sneaked that limitation in, you might be able to find an older version somewhere, or it's predecessor filemon and regmon, but any of these require a fair amount of technical knowledge to interpret the output.

Re the thumbnails problem, untick in ccleaner

GolfDelta

bsod wrote: »

they've sneaked that limitation in, you might be able to find an older version somewhere, or it's predecessor filemon and regmon, but any of these require a fair amount of technical knowledge to interpret the output.

I've had a bit of a breakthrough (I think). It turns out that thumbs.db was disabled in Folder Options. why I have no idea but I've enabled it now and to me the thumbs are showing much faster even on a full screen window.

I need to reboot now after removing a few software items and I'll run CCleaner after that and see how I get on.

Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction.

bsod

GolfDelta wrote: »

I'll lose software I no longer have the discs for. MS Office 2007 for example

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/office

GolfDelta

bsod wrote: »

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/office

Very useful links, thank you. I've used them already.

As for the reboot etc. All seems to be working faster, a little clunky perhaps but that's normal after deleting software. I'll run a defrag later and it should smooth itself out then.

You've just saved me £20+ on a graphics card - thank you.