Normally I try google first to see if there's anything out there to explain what is going on but I really don't know even where to begin searching for this problem.
Ok, at first I thought it was just some freak occurance but it has happened a few times now so I know that something is definatively wrong. What happens is that sometimes the Windows UI becomes pretty much unresponsive. Some things do work. Ctrl+alt+del brings up task manager and it draws its pretty graphs looking pretty much normal but you can't click on anything (like the computer is too busy but this is on dual core machine and taskman is showing 1-2% CPU utilisation so that ain't it). The mouse still moves around but clicking seems to have no effect. Using hotkeys on the keyboard to launch apps (e.g. calculator) works but you can't type anything or navigate any menus or anything.
So far this has happened once particularly badly when trying to render something in Maya with mental ray, making the machine utterly unusable resulting in me doing a hard reboot after about an hour of trying to fix it. Other than that it seems to happen just about every time after exiting Diablo2 for just a few seconds before fixing itself. It also just happened while trying to copy some data from a CompactFlash card (also Windows was throwing some errors at me for some of the files); in this case it again fixed itself after a little while.
It seems like each time there is some system resource that is being blocked and Windows refuses to let me do anything (except for ctrl+alt+del and pressing hotkeys) until the resource is freed again (but its not the CPU, if taskman is to be trusted).
This is really driving me crazy and its not something that I have ever come across in about 7 or so years of heavily using Windows (NT4 -> 2k -> XP). If anyone has experienced anything similar, heard about it or even just has a good idea of what to google for, it would be really appreciated.
My system specs: a64 x2 4800+, 4gb ram, 74gb Raptor x2 (in raid0), 300gb Seagate Barracuda, ati x1900xtx, winxp sp2. Other bits and pieces: DEP on (for essential services), pagefile turned off, large system cache on. All the latest drivers installed. AMD cool&quiet driver installed (but turned off). That's about all the relevant information that I can think of. This is a pretty new system, only maybe three weeks old or so. I didn't notice anything at the beginning but then I've only really been pushing it lately and it only seems to happen under certain circumnstances as I described above.
Ok, at first I thought it was just some freak occurance but it has happened a few times now so I know that something is definatively wrong. What happens is that sometimes the Windows UI becomes pretty much unresponsive. Some things do work. Ctrl+alt+del brings up task manager and it draws its pretty graphs looking pretty much normal but you can't click on anything (like the computer is too busy but this is on dual core machine and taskman is showing 1-2% CPU utilisation so that ain't it). The mouse still moves around but clicking seems to have no effect. Using hotkeys on the keyboard to launch apps (e.g. calculator) works but you can't type anything or navigate any menus or anything.
So far this has happened once particularly badly when trying to render something in Maya with mental ray, making the machine utterly unusable resulting in me doing a hard reboot after about an hour of trying to fix it. Other than that it seems to happen just about every time after exiting Diablo2 for just a few seconds before fixing itself. It also just happened while trying to copy some data from a CompactFlash card (also Windows was throwing some errors at me for some of the files); in this case it again fixed itself after a little while.
It seems like each time there is some system resource that is being blocked and Windows refuses to let me do anything (except for ctrl+alt+del and pressing hotkeys) until the resource is freed again (but its not the CPU, if taskman is to be trusted).
This is really driving me crazy and its not something that I have ever come across in about 7 or so years of heavily using Windows (NT4 -> 2k -> XP). If anyone has experienced anything similar, heard about it or even just has a good idea of what to google for, it would be really appreciated.
My system specs: a64 x2 4800+, 4gb ram, 74gb Raptor x2 (in raid0), 300gb Seagate Barracuda, ati x1900xtx, winxp sp2. Other bits and pieces: DEP on (for essential services), pagefile turned off, large system cache on. All the latest drivers installed. AMD cool&quiet driver installed (but turned off). That's about all the relevant information that I can think of. This is a pretty new system, only maybe three weeks old or so. I didn't notice anything at the beginning but then I've only really been pushing it lately and it only seems to happen under certain circumnstances as I described above.