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June 7th, 2006 01:00
Unable to Open My Computer, Control Panel
We have a Dell computer running XP Professional. The problem we are experiencing (within the last month or so) is, after the computer has been on for awhile, we cannot open My Computer or Control Panel; sometimes even Microsoft Word or Excel. When we try to open any of these, either from the Desktop or the Start menu, the screen flashes quickly to the blue Dell logo background and then displays the Desktop again. We can still use the internet and my son is able to use Istant Messaging (he does leave an away message). I have run Norton anti-virus scans and Ad-aware but no viruses or spyware are found. In order to open any of these, we must turn of the computer and wait for a few minutes before turning it on again. We can then usually open them. Obviously, something is wrong but I need help determining if it is something I can fix. I would appreciate help with this situation. Thanks.
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jmwills
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June 7th, 2006 02:00
thegeodeman2005
14 Posts
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June 7th, 2006 02:00
I have XP home edition and experienced sort of the same problems you have been having.... I too for the longest time thought I had a virus and Dell Support couldn't figure it out ether but I finally found out that it was a Microsoft update that was causing my nightmare.... Update KB908531 I uninstalled that update and all my problems went away.... I don't know if that would help you though.... You could do a restore back to before the problem started but you said its been doing it for a while so its going to be hard to know how far to restore it back to.... Also if no one can help you here you can check out Windows Update News Groups here http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsupdate&lang=en&cr=US and see if anyone in that forum is having a similar problem.... There's a lot of people having problems with different updates....
Good Luck
tgsmith
2.9K Posts
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June 7th, 2006 02:00
Charbar,
You most likely have a memory hog (or tsr) running that doesn't leave enough memory unallocated for Control Panel to open. You might wish to download Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel and analyze just what programs are loading at Windows Startup. It is available here: http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml .You can use his Startup Control Panel to disable Startup tasks one at a time to see which one(s) may be your culprit.
Likewise, you can use msconfig to enable/disable startup tasks one at a time. Task Manager can be used to disable running processes one at a time to see which one(s) have an effect on opening Control Panel or My Computer.
How much ram does your system have installed? I have seen this problem occur on system's with 128-256Mb of RAM after Windows XP was upgraded to SP2. Usually, upgrading to 512-1Gb of Ram solved the problem on those systems.
Tony