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Computer acting up

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by daniel, Jul 17, 2006.

  1. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    I wonder if anyone can offer any insight into this. It does not yet seem to be causing any problems, but I wonder. It appeared after I installed the latest version of Spy Sweeper.

    Whatever program I am in will, once every few minutes, lose focus for just a moment, and then focus returns to the program. It happens in an eyeblink, but during that eyeblink the title bar and the program's tag in the status bar both fade to the color of a background program.

    I'm running XP Pro SP2 all up to date on updates, plus Norton AV and Firewall, and Spy Sweeper, which I just upgraded to the latest build. The only programs running are the same ones I always have open in the background: Outlook Express with Mail Frontier attached, WordPerfect; Quatro Pro; Creative Play Center (a music program, formerly for the creative MP3 player, but now just a music-playing program) and Firefox. There's a long list of processes running, few of which I have any idea what they are.
     
  2. brandon

    brandon Member

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    Well, you can Google each of those processes and see what you can find. There's probably a bunch of the processes that can be disabled from startup, i.e. the ones that only check for updates every once-in-a-while like qttask.exe and jusched.exe. You can also watch the list of processes in the task manager (organized descending by CPU usage) and see what process pops into use whenever the program loses focus.
     
  3. agill

    agill New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Jul 17 2006, 08:46 PM) [snapback]287894[/snapback]</div>
    Try shutting down all accessory programs, disconnect the internet and run Disk defragmentation. See if that helps to place fragmented files next to each other on the hard disk and it might even improve overall performance.
    Sometimes having many programs start up at the same time causes focus to shift momentarily between programs. If u give more details of ur computer hardware configuration it might help.
    I think such a problem is also caused sometimes when the video memory is shared (as against a dedicated video display chip).
     
  4. barbaram

    barbaram Active Member

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    does it happen in any program? sounds more like a problem with your monitor....?
     
  5. brandon

    brandon Member

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    Nah, with the symptoms described, you're almost definitely looking at a software issue, not a hardware problem.
     
  6. Sufferin' Prius Envy

    Sufferin' Prius Envy Platinum Member

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    Find out more about that “long list of processes running.â€

    Download Sysinternals Process Explorer (Freeware)

    Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

    http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html



    Also apropos for the symptoms and this this time of year; the need to make sure you computer isn't suffering from excess heat. When was the last time you cleaned the inside of the case and checked the fans for proper operation?
     
  7. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    What I was actually worried about was whether this indicated some kind of rogue program hidden in there. But Spy Sweeper reported that the computer is clean, as does Norton AV.

    There is no performance problem. The focus issue happens in an eyeblink and does not interrupt my work.

    But now I'm wondering if it was just WordPerfect saving its automatic backup files, though I had never noticed the blink before. I'm going to pay more attention to whether it happens when I'm using other programs.

    ... Nope. I closed WP and it still happens.

    And BTW, I defragged my HD not long ago, so that shouldn't be an issue. It could be Windows doing some sort of housekeeping, but it never happened before. I thought maybe it was Spy Sweeper checking for spyware definitions much more often, but that should not cause my foreground program to lose focus.

    BTW, the latest version of SpySweeper claims to be able to detect RootKits. I wonder. I thought the whole point of rootkits was that they were undetectable.
     
  8. c4

    c4 Active Member

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    Are you sure it's not Norton? I dumped Norton AV for Grisoft AVG and couldn't be happier.. Same with Norton Internet Security- dumped it and installed an older copy of BlackIce from my Win2000 days (but they still had updates available!).. The Norton stuff does work as advertised, but there are bugs and so many layers of object-oriented classes that they eat up memory and CPU.. With a P4 2.8GHz and 1Gb RAM and the various Norton tools installed, there were times that the machine suffered noticable slowdowns and inexplicable behaviour that all vanished when I uninstalled Norton..

    I am absolutely opposed to all these object oriented languages- when you're going concept to code, they're great, they also allow much better code reuse than ever before, but the problem is that I'd say that 90% of the programmers out there can't write worth sh*t in object oriented languages, so you end up with bloated code that runs like molasses, is impossible to debug and even more difficult to maintain.. This is expecially evident in langauges where the line between conventional code and object-oriented code is blurred.. I come from a Smalltalk background where the line is clearly drawn- the language simply does not allow you to write some of the horrible stuff that you see going on today in Java, ActiveX and C++.. Anyways, just my opinion..
     
  9. brandon

    brandon Member

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    Have you loaded any other new software, browser add-ons, etc. lately?
     
  10. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(brandon @ Jul 18 2006, 10:41 AM) [snapback]288233[/snapback]</div>
    Like I said, I upgraded to the latest build of Spy Sweeper.
     
  11. jherrick

    jherrick New Member

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    What web sites do you have open in Firefox? I notice the same behavior if any of the web sites I have open refresh themselves automatically. Try closing all web sites and see if it persists.
     
  12. mikepaul

    mikepaul Senior Member

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    For weeks now, my wireless mouse has wandered a LOT, like the computer has gotten too busy doing something else to keep track of it. Can't find anything that should be making it do that.

    Then sometimes the whole computer siezes up while the Virtual Memory file gets made larger, like 512MB of RAM isn't enough anymore. No sign my memory chips aren't working right.

    And today I read about new and improved rootkits that hide from scanning software so I wonder how shafted I am...
     
  13. Maytrix

    Maytrix Member

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    I don't think it's the cause of your problem, but I've never liked spysweeper. On newly installed "clean" systems, I'll go with Microsoft Defender. On older systems, I'll go with defender, plus spybot Search and destroy.

    Just to ensure you are not infected, I'd download Trend Micro's Sysclean. I've found it to be the most reliable of all of them and I have detected viruses before on systems norton and other programs have found to be clean.

    After all this, If you are still having problems, I'd remove any unnecessary programs from starting up. You can also run msconfig - once it opens, go to the startup tab and try disabling everything. See if the problem still occurs.

    Hope this helps.
     
  14. Sufferin' Prius Envy

    Sufferin' Prius Envy Platinum Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ Jul 17 2006, 11:04 PM) [snapback]288028[/snapback]</div>
    [apparently talking to myself :blink: ]

    Noooooooooo! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

    I recommend a software program early in the morning and then news comes out just after the noon hour on the same day that Microsoft had gone and bought the company. :(

    Damn it! Is nothing sacred?

    We ARE being assimilated! :eek:

    Get the program while you can . . . before it becomes a bloated, buggy, dangerous POM$$$S.
     
  15. flareak

    flareak Fleet Captain

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    i think this is your problem :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
     
  16. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Actually, I'm running Linux on my laptop, and if I decide it can do what I need, I may just switch the main computer to Linux.

    At present I'm running SuSE 10.0. But after my vacation (I leave for 2 weeks tomorrow) I may remove SuSE and try ubuntu. Right now the laptop is for experimentation. I may try Mandriva also.

    With luck I may be able to dump XP and Microsoft entirely.
     
  17. duanerw

    duanerw senior member

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    Hi Get rid of norton internet security,it will cause lots of problems.type in startup inspector and down load
    and install it.while online you run it and it will tell you what is running in the background and in most cases
    it will tell you if you need it or not.you can remove the check and it will no longer run in the back ground.if it
    tells you it dont know what the program is ,it is best to let it run unless you really know what you are doing.
    its great and free,cant beat that with a stick.
    also i think the best thing to use for spyware is adaware and that is also free.I haven used spy sweaper but my neighbor has it and dont like it ,he said he has lots of problems with it.
    I put adaware and startup inspector on every computer i sell and dont have many call backs.