Hello Alain,

Your first question sounds like a problem with power to me. If so, it requires somebody with more technical knowledge than I have to discuss. And I am probably wrong anyhow. Does your technical documentation go into detail about your power supply?

Your second question is easy. Task Manager does not understand hyperthreading. When hyperthreading is enabled, it thinks you have 2 processors, so it divides by 2. 100% utilization is reported as 50%. Hyperthreading allows you to run a second thread whenever the first thread stalls in the pipeline because of dependencies. This lets you run an application and a short OS task thread simultaneously. It really does speed up throughput slightly. Call it about 14% faster while the OS thread is running. Normally, you will only notice faster response in certain video editing tasks, though if you have sound enabled on a game, you will see slightly faster frame rates with hyperthreading on. Task Manager will claim that you are running much slower than 2 processors would, which fools people into thinking that they are slower.

As for overclocking, you will need some voltage meters, etc., which brings us back with how to check up on your first problem. Maybe you should ask around on an OC forum?

mycrofth

Thanks for the explanation about hyper-threading. I'm not sure about the power problem. My documentation doesn't talk about it in with any unique depth. I've tried disconnectiong USB's and things but they don't have the same effect. A good example of seizing up is I right click on an item in explorer, and nothing pops up, so I wait and wait, nothing happens, but I press the mute button on my laptop and then it pops up. First few times I considered it a conincidence, but it seems to be the universal solution now.

I don't know much about the voltage my computer gets, I just plug it into the power bar and run her. The fan on the computer is pretty good, and it doesn't seem to me to have a heating problem. It never get's so hot that it would disrupt anything. I'd be more willing to place money on a faulty sound card, but I'm not sure how the computer would have such a dependancy on it that it should be freezing up waiting for a response for it. I've noticed that my music will sometimes skip on my laptop when playing it. To me that makes no sence but I've ignored it because it rarely happens. What I do notice is that sometimes when my computer becomes completely unresponsive, mouse, keyboard, all program, mute button, everything - my music will just keep on playing like it's not affected by the fact that my damn system is crashing. Maybe these are all realated.

`Alain

Alain,

I have a few more tricks to suggest.

First thing after you boot your machine, run Task Manager and switch to the Processes tab. When a "lockup" occurs, see if a certain process is capturing a lot of time in the CPU column. Perhaps you can make some progress if you can identify a rogue process.

Also, this right click delay, in my experience, can be a problem with some registry entries, especially relating to the user shell. There is a utility called "Regmon" which displays registry activity in real time, which can reveal some things going on in the registry while this problem is occurring. You can try some registry cleaning tools for this, but be careful to make a registry backup and be sure you know what you're doing. My favorite fixer is Norton Utility's "WinDoctor;" it just doesn't delete bad registry items, but looks for proper corrections. Microsoft has a tool "RegClean" that should be safe, but unsupported by them. I also like Jouni Vuorios' RegCleaner Ver. 4.3.

A simple method to test user shell corruption is to create another user account on your computer (probably an Admin level account, if that's the account type you normally use), and see if problem occurs under that user's login. You'll have a new default interface but probably you'll be missing some Start menu icons for user-specific installations, and you won't have some desktop icons. This new desktop will likely be much snappier, and may even solve the problem.

Work with this new account and interface a bit and see if the problem goes away. If so, then you can stick with this new account for normal use and just keep the other account as a backup. You can copy some shortcuts over from the old desktop to the new, as needed. It is a good idea to work with a second Admin account anyway, as it is a bit more secure than being online all the time with the default (and unremovable) Admin account. Later, you can try to simplify the default desktop and see if it clears up.

P.S., IMPORTANT: WRITE DOWN AND DO NOT FORGET YOUR DEFAULT ADMIN ID AND PASSWORD. This is the top-level Admin account necessary to gain access to your system. Should you need to run any kind of recovery utility, you'll need this ID and password to get into your system!!!

Of course it would be a good idea to run some anti-spyware/adware programs also.

Good luck, Alain!

Hello Alain,
I should have kept quiet about power and muting. It sounds as though you are clicking on a 'mute' screen icon. If so, then the problem is not with the power supply.

Have you ever tried Belarc Advisor at http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html ? If you could copy a screen from it into wordpad or something similar, then post here, it would tell people a great deal about the system they are puzzling over.

Best wishes,
mycrofth

Your system looks quite clean. Comparing it with mine reminded me that I needed to take one step that you had. Being slightly paranoid, I have disabled 3 of my local system accounts: guest, HelpAssistant and SUPPORT. But guest is a good idea if other people might use your CPU. Since you use Registry Mechanic, I am out of ideas. You have ruled out temperature problems.

I am back to wondering about a hardware glitch of some sort, not necessarily power. After looking over the HP site (I checked the general zd8000 notes, since I could not figure out your specific model: zd8001 - zd8080) I could not find anything in the FAQs. Maybe you should send in a report to 'Contact HP', emphasizing your low temperature experiment while trying the mute switch.

Anybody with some ideas?

mycrofth