Windows Becomes Unresponsive

[rt]

Too bad: the solution did not work for me. The symptoms are diabolical enough to look like a virus/malware, but various programs have failed to find anything on the disk, in memory, or in the register. I have run hardware diagnostics on the computer, low-level scanned the hard disk, system restored to a previous restore point, but nothing appears to work.

This is what happens (maybe I should start a new thread?): Basically at an unpredictable time but typically within a few minutes/"actions", explorer actions will seize. E.g. "My computer" will keep on showing the hour-glass, "Add/Remove programs" will not populate. CTRL-ALT-DEL will switch to an empty desktop display, but fails to open the window with the task-manager etc. buttons. Firefox/IE7 will never bring up their window.
At this stage "Shutdown" will also not display anything and my only recourse is to hold the power button for 5 secs. O, this is Windows XP SP3.

Strangely enough, when things do work they typically work fine. E.g. if I get firefox up it will work ok. If I get Disk properties up I can run chkdsk and defragment and I have been able to backup my personal files.

The one indications that something has happened is that the Wave Systems login does not longer recongnize my fingerprint (but it still takes my password) and that I can not open the encrypted Vault (no problem since these are sync'ed to my work PC -- I would not encrypt otherwise --).

I am inclined to believe that some system file has become corrupted and am contemplating just copying a lot of dll's and exe's from a similar notebook and to see what happens. Last resort will be to reinstall/repair Windows I guess, but I am hoping that this forum can offer some suggestions to try first.

R.

[RicheemxX]

Since this sounds completely unrelated to the thread you posted it in I created a new thread to hopefully help with responses.