Frozen fish

I wish I knew more about computers. I don't suppose I'm alone in wishing that. It would be bearable being such a duffer if I could find someone around here who knew one end of a PC from another, but the "experts" here couldn't muster a clue if they were bludgeoned with bricks and their lives depended on working out the problem. I know this because I had a problem with my old PC, and each guy I rang or got to look at it make a different diagnosis, some of them on their face absurd. I worked out the problem myself -- the computer was fucked and I had to buy a new one.

Generally, I will work things out for myself. I'll google and I'll poke, and seemingly unsurmountable problems are, erm, surmounted.

But I have one that is driving me fucking nuts. My computer freezes. It doesn't bluescreen. It stops. It has a think and then it carries on. Nothing works while it's thinking. The cursor freezes and the mouse doesn't work. What the fuck is that?

I thought it might be a virus or a trojan, but I've tried several means to find them and can't. I'm reasonably sure the machine is clean, and if it isn't, it's infected with something I can't find. So that's a possibility.

Another possibility is my settings for the interwebnet. There's a setting that checks if some protocol or other is in effect. It sometimes causes freezes apparently. So I switched it off. Nightmare. The interwebnet disappeared. That's not a great solution.

A further possibility is my firewall. Maybe it's doing something that freezes up the system now and then.

This only really started happening when I switched to Firefox. Maybe it's something to do with that, although switching off Firefox doesn't fix it.

I can't remember whether I tried switching off the modem. Even if that worked though, I wouldn't know the answer. It's impossible for me not to be connected.

Still, that's nothing. I can't work out how to connect my digital box to my video either. Answers on a postcard.

posted by Dr Zen @ 9:59 am