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This almost sounds like you have some kind of malware infection. Is that possible?
On my previous computer at work with XP, it would nearly squeak out to 5 days most of the time, before the explorer inevitably got flaky and pulled the whole system down. That was with regular heavy-duty usage over that time.
On my TS (still w Vista), it seems to get into trouble pretty often at the 3 day mark (which also seems to coincide with when there have been downloaded Windows updates). On occasion, it may last out to 7 days (per regular home use), but mostly, some deep down service goes rogue by 3 days and pretty mucy brings everything else to a grinding halt until you restart it.
It doesn't restart gracefully, either. At this point, a functional Task Manager cannot even be brought up. Sometimes the Start Menu doesn't even work. Upon issuing a restart (from the ctrl-alt-del outside screen), often it will get hung-up on something on the way to logging off, and just sit there at my picture desktop indefinitely. If I am "lucky" it makes it to the logging-off screen after a long wait, but then hangs there indefinitely (eternal spinning loop indicator). After about 15-20 min of this and no clear indications of any hdd activity, I'll just do a forced-power-off with the power button. Then reboot it, then tell it to restart + apply updates.
Has anyone else found a good practice for encouraging longer uptimes? (preferably I'd like to get out to 7 days...a weekly reboot sounds reasonable, imo)
February 23, 2010 10:09 PM
February 23, 2010 10:26 PM
I suppose it is possible, but I do try to keep my shareware dabbling to a trickle. AVG and Windows Defender report no suspect activity.
February 23, 2010 10:57 PM
Apart from that, the only other thing I can think of is that your system is unable to stay cool enough for proper operation.
February 24, 2010 12:14 AM
I would be least inclined to expect that. This is not a hard freeze. It remains operational, but you can tell that some critical hooks have gotten bungled which prevent certain tasks from proceeding any further.
The CPU % is nominally low, there is nothing happening for the GPU to get worked up over, and never is there a hint of distress from the fan speed. I've seen it run hard, though, so I know it will respond to truly heavy duty cycle scenarios.
February 24, 2010 1:04 AM
Hmm. I wonder what other people might advise at this point. My next suggestion would be to use the Recovery DVD set you can create from the system to get it back to factory condition. Back up all data to a USB drive of some sort first, of course. Then leave it running like that for a good few days, if that's possible. If indeed some critical hooks have gotten bungled, the only way to fix that seems to me to be to reload the OS from scratch. Alternatively you could try to reinstall the latest OS Service Pack.
Anyone else out there have other suggestions? Diane? Jollywombat? DaveTN? WaveRider?
February 24, 2010 7:39 AM
If you are sure it is not malware and such (AVG and defender are pretty poor at picking those out, may wish to run a pass of malwarebytes/Spybot to be sure but up to you). I assume hard the drive has been defragged regularly, Vista is on the latest service pack (sp2) and your have ensured your drivers are the latest revisions and such as well? All basic troubleshooting steps I know but just checking.
Not sure what TS you are using but will take a guess it's the desktop. How old is the install currently, IE how long has that copy of vista been active on the machine now. Vista does suffer from the typical OS "rot" that all OS'es experience from normal usage, but with proper maintinece can be partially avoided.
I have a vista installation on one of my main machines at home as I don't need to upgrade it to 7. Its uptime is usually 20+ days, would be longer but it auto restarts itself for forced updates every now and then. Current OS life on there is a little over 1 year and 6 months. If your OS has been there for a while you might try running CC Cleaner on it to get rid of some of the old registry entries from programs long gone and other unneeded crap. All else fails, a fresh install of the OS is always good to get back to that new computer speed.
I know those are all pretty standard tech support answers, but with the limited information given that's the best I can offer to help performance.
Moderator - Creator of Tx2 Touchsmart All in one Installer.
Touchsmart Tx2z Laptop: AMD ZM-87 CPU, 4gb Corsair DDR2 2x2gb, 256gb Corsair Performance SSD, Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition.
February 24, 2010 8:59 AM
I would also suggest reviewing what programs are set to start via MSCONFIG and remove some that really are not needed.
That being said, I have always had the impression that the Touchsmart suite has to potential to have memory leaks, especially in the desktop environment where it multi-tasks. They may not be big leaks, but if you have multiple TS apps open for days at a time, I can see a potential there for issues.
I'd set my system up for a test to pinpoint it better by disabling the TS suite from starting automatically and running in the background, then I'd bring the system up and avoid using TS apps for a week and see if my stability issue was still there, if it is that will help troubleshoot.
Diane
February 24, 2010 9:22 PM
Lots of good suggestions- thanks! I will investigate further in those directions.
I'm all set to jump over to Win7, if I want to. I just want to wait a little longer if there are 1st gen patches/SP's on the way for it.
My Vista install has only been alive since Oct 09. Pretty amazing it could get bungled that quickly, eh? I was expecting to get a longer stretch out of it than that, but honestly, it has had little issues about it since the beginning. I had imagined that these were just early OS hiccups that would get covered quickly by ongoing updates.
Alternatively, maybe I should be more rigorous to follow install directions when it says to "quit everything" before proceeding. I've been pretty casual about that lately. Maybe it was that which caught up with me?
February 25, 2010 6:03 AM
There is nothing inherently wrong with Vista, and after SP1 it got even more stable, we have Vista workstations that stay up for weeks at a time with no issues.
The OS/rot/creep normally comes from users installing things in the course of years, not months, but it's always possible that there was a single program that's causing your issues.
February 28, 2010 2:02 AM
Finally got a chance to put on the CC, and unsurprisingly, it did find a lot of stuff to "clean" in the registry. I'll report back if benefits emerge as I put more hours in this new state.
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