Locking up problem

highfield · September 18th, 2002, 07:07 AM

I am extremely frustrated because I just lost a whole morning's work on an Excel spreadsheet.

Sometimes my computer locks completely for no apparent reason. I can still move the mouse, but that's all - clicking has no effect, my only option is to press the reset button and lose everything. I know, I know I should regularly save a back up, but sometimes you get so tied up that you forget.

Does anyone know why this might be happening?

My configuration is as follows:

Windows 2K Professional, all latest builds and updates.
Office 2K professional, all latest SP's and updates.
IE 6.0
AMD Athlon 1.2ghz processor
512 MB RAM
Recent virus scan and scandisk reveals no problems.

muno · September 18th, 2002, 07:12 AM

I don't know what the problem is, but you should enable automatic saving.

It's through 'tools' menu. If there's no such option available, get the macro that enables it.

Look from excel help for 'automatic saving'.
-M

**Whir** · September 18th, 2002, 07:12 AM

Bad memory maybe? Usually when you can move the mouse but nothing works, it's because the machine ran itself out of memory (right?). I get that a lot with AutoCAD. Luckily AutoCAD never crashes. It just eats all the handy CPU and Memory till the machine has to slow down so much it acts like it's dead... How long have you waited for it to unfreeze??

highfield · September 18th, 2002, 07:15 AM

I don't think that it's a memory problem. I usually work a lot with Photoshop editing large image files, and have never had a problem up to now. All I had open today was Excel, Outlook and Messenger. That shouldn't be anywhere near as taxing as Photoshop!

**Whir** · September 18th, 2002, 07:21 AM

Sounds like a Microsoft problem. Well, Microsoft is a problem, but hey... I used to run Outlook Express, Messenger, Photoshop, Word, FrontPage, Access, and fifty other things all day long at work, so it's probably something specific to your computer. Maybe just a buggy install?

highfield · September 18th, 2002, 07:28 AM

It's only been happening for the last 2 weeks now and very occasionally. Apart from Windows critical updates I don't think I've changed anything - and it ran sweetly before.. Usually when it happens I have only one or two programmes running - the time before this one I only had Outlook and IE 6 running and it froze when I tried to open an address. This time it froze when I replied to an IM from Messenger and like I say I lost a morning's work.

Bopper · September 18th, 2002, 02:26 PM

I work in tech support, and usually(at least in the most recent past) Intermittant Lockups are a result of Spyware, or a combination of Spyware, and system issues, like a fragmented HDD, or errors on the Disk itself.
try DLding Ad aware. run that, and scandisk, and defrag.