unresponsive after startup

My friend asked me to troubleshoot her Acer Aspire One with windows 7 starter on it, 2GB Ram installed. It was working fine, but now after windows starts it becomes totally unresponsive with in seconds - she logs in, the desktop appears, but then it locks up when you try to launch anything, even the task manager or the start menu. Its starts into safe mode fine, and works perfectly then, I've tried a system restore to a few weeks ago, but it made no difference. I'm stuck for ideas, any suggestions?

 

Definitely run a virus and spyware scan. Could be that some process is eating up all the CPU time.

Also possible that a driver is repeatedly crashing and restarting. I know that Windows 7 and Vista have a way of not letting the entire system crash is a driver crashes. The OS freezes for a couple seconds while the driver is restarted. I had this issue with some early Nvidia drivers that were poorly programmed and could not deal with 4GB ram. 2GB and everything was fine, but try and start the system with 4GB ram and the driver kept crashing.

More information would be helpful since at this point, I'm just guessing. Screenshots of task manager as soon as you log in? Could use a camera to take a picture if the system freezes too fast.

 

MSE finds nothing in a scan, and task manager reports that nothing is using up CPU time, there's no suspicious looking processes as far as I can see. How do I work out if a driver is at fault - Event viewer doesn't seem to say anything about drivers.

 

You could always try using selective startup in msconfig. Try unchecking ALL startup items and see if the freeze occurs. If it doesn't, then you know one of those startup objects is the culprit and you can theoretically figure out which one by process of elimination.

 

I tried a cold boot (no startup items and only essential windows services), still the same problem, all apps get the 'Not Responding' message in the title bar. Also tried a sfc /scannow from the cmd prompt - it found nothing, tried a repair install, nothing needed repairing apparently. Got all the latest drivers from the Acer site, still the same problem. Also did a memory check, came out fine. I'm lost for ideas now, any suggestions?

 

Also try running a Check Disk (right click on your hard drive and click properties and it's in the tools tab). Make sure to select all the check-boxes and then you'll need to reboot for the scan to start.

I don't understand how a full selective startup boot doesn't work when safe mode does. That doesn't make any sense, because a full selective startup should essentially replicate safe mode conditions to some extent.

Have you tried checking event viewer for any obvious errors or critical issues?

 

It is going to take a long time to diagnose the problem over the forums. Can you reinstall from scratch?

 

had an HP machine doing this on WinXP, turned out to be power management putting the drives to sleep. In safe mode you have a basic disk driver but even in stripped MSConfig you load all the drivers. So check into the disk and video drivers specifically and be sure no external devices untill solved.

 

It could be a driver or service issues. In Safe Mode (Press F4 before Windows loading screen appears), in it, your system should be fine.

Go to a different system and get the SATA controller drivers and/or motherboard drivers (the SATA controller drivers is sometimes in the motherboard drivers), and put it in a USB memory stick.

Go to your Acer, insert your USB key and try to install the drivers. Try now, if no go.

Back in safe mode, open msconfig, go to services tab, and Check the box "hide Microsoft services", now look closely. Uncheck everything, except anti-virus.
Now restart your computer normally, and see if it helps. If it does, you can start enabling services one by one until you found the one until you find the services that causes issue.

 

This happened to me with a bad vbios, but it doesn't sound like your friend is exactly the type to constantly flashing bioses...

 

Sounds like a hardware issue to me. If it has two RAM sticks, try taking out one and see if the same problem occurs.

If it still does after removing both sticks trying running Memtest86+ and see if you get any errors.

Also, try updating the BIOS.

You could also try a clean install, but again, seems more like a hardware issue. If it's even locking up on safe mode something is terribly wrong.