OT - Opened Apps Freeze

On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:01:23 +0000 (UTC), Boris
wrote:

"BillW50" wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This
is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that
can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible
that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a
keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them
due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came
with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I
entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no.
I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly
Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have.
(I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked.
The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot
of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a
clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still
no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the
problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest
stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities
pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a
hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could
be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits
and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in
safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly
called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a
flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused
(buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power
regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause
this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first.
Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But
when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it.
Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if
your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a
shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the
very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive
should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can
help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I
was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of
other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes
to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring
the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to
power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are
frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell
site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on
this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the
945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports
memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers
have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did
find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed
drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and
see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver
would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other
XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh).
She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop.


Like some others, I think it has to do with drivers. I can't say
which right now but if it were me, I'd start looking outside of Dell
for specific drivers. The fact that you have an exclamation point
makes it obvious.

Boris wrote in
:

"BillW50" wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell
them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came
with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I
entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no.
I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly
Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have.
(I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked.
The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a
lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did
a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and
still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the
problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest
stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could
be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits
and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in
safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly
called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a
flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused
(buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power
regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause
this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first.
Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But
when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it.
Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if
your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a
shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the
very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive
should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can
help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew.
I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple
of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine
goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will
not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power
button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course,
the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the
Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few
years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is
yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the
945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports
memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did
find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed
drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums,
and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular
driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop
(argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop.


I found the driver on the Intel site, and it is ver 7.2.2.1006, that
same one I installed from the Dell site. Still no luck

Boris wrote in
:

"BillW50" wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell
them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came
with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I
entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no.
I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly
Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have.
(I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked.
The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a
lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did
a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and
still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the
problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest
stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could
be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits
and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in
safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly
called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a
flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused
(buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power
regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause
this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first.
Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But
when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it.
Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if
your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a
shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the
very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive
should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can
help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew.
I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple
of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine
goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will
not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power
button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course,
the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the
Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few
years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is
yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the
945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports
memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did
find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed
drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums,
and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular
driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop
(argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop.


I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the
same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't
bother.

Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I
remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains
drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same
Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I
made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from
the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the
machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared
up that was next to SM Bus Controller.

Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the
ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was
working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told
that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator
account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It
installed fine.

I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer
Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as
administrator, and the freezing was fixed.

I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was
gone!!!

There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the
MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does
pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor.

Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts,
and have taken the time to reply.

Boris wrote in
. 18:

Boris wrote in
:

"BillW50" wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell
them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came
with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I
entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no.
I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly
Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have.
(I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked.
The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a
lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did
a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and
still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the
problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest
stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could
be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits
and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in
safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly
called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a
flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused
(buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power
regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause
this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first.
Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But
when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it.
Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if
your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a
shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the
very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive
should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can
help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew.
I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple
of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine
goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will
not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power
button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course,
the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the
Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few
years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is
yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the
945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports
memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did
find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed
drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums,
and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular
driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop
(argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop.


I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the
same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I
didn't
bother.

Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I
remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains
drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same
Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I
made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from
the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start
the
machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared
up that was next to SM Bus Controller.

Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the
ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad
was
working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told
that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator
account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It
installed fine.

I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer
Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as
administrator, and the freezing was fixed.

I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was
gone!!!

There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the
MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does
pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor.

Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts,
and have taken the time to reply.


BTW, Christoher, I did disable "Tap to Click". g

On Dec 14, 11:02*pm, Boris wrote:


BTW, Christoher, I did disable "Tap to Click". g

RnR should be given credit for his astuteness! And Bill...well, he
often goes-off on tangents! ;^)

On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell
them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came
with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I
entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no.
I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly
Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have.
(I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked.
The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a
lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did
a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and
still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the
problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest
stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could
be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits
and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in
safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly
called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a
flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused
(buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power
regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause
this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first.
Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But
when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it.
Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if
your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a
shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the
very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive
should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can
help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew.
I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple
of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine
goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will
not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power
button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course,
the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the
Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few
years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is
yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the
945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports
memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did
find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed
drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums,
and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular
driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop
(argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop.


I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the
same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't
bother.

Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I
remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains
drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same
Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I
made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from
the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the
machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared
up that was next to SM Bus Controller.

Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the
ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was
working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told
that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator
account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It
installed fine.

I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer
Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as
administrator, and the freezing was fixed.

I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was
gone!!!

There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the
MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does
pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor.

Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts,
and have taken the time to reply.

dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that
time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or
system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even
bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to
search for the desired driver one at a time.

Christopher Muto wrote in
:

On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only
thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell
them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came
with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I
entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no.
I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly
Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it
was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have.
(I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I
did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked.
The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a
lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did
a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and
still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the
problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest
stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on
the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning
on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could
be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits
and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in
safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly
called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a
flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused
(buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power
regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause
this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first.
Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But
when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it.
Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if
your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a
shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In
the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the
very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive
should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can
help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew.
I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple
of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine
goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will
not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power
button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course,
the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the
Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few
years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is
yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the
945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports
memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did
find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed
drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums,
and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular
driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop
(argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop.


I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the
same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I
didn't
bother.

Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I
remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains
drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same
Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I
made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from
the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start
the
machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared
up that was next to SM Bus Controller.

Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the
ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad
was
working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told
that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator
account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver.
It
installed fine.

I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer
Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as
administrator, and the freezing was fixed.

I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was
gone!!!

There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during
the
MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does
pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor.

Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts,
and have taken the time to reply.

dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that
time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or
system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even
bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to
search for the desired driver one at a time.


Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site and
noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum).

I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back.
After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like it,
make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that describes
what each file is for.

On 12/15/2011 11:22 AM, Boris wrote:
Christopher wrote in
:

On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

wrote in :

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only
thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell
them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came
with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I
entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no.
I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly
Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it
was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have.
(I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I
did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked.
The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a
lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did
a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and
still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the
problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest
stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on
the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning
on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could
be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits
and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in
safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly
called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a
flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused
(buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power
regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause
this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first.
Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But
when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it.
Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if
your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a
shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In
the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the
very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive
should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can
help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew.
I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple
of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine
goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will
not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power
button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course,
the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the
Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few
years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is
yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the
945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports
memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did
find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed
drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums,
and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular
driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop
(argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop.


I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the
same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I
didn't
bother.

Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I
remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains
drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same
Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I
made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from
the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start
the
machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared
up that was next to SM Bus Controller.

Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the
ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad
was
working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told
that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator
account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver.
It
installed fine.

I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer
Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as
administrator, and the freezing was fixed.

I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was
gone!!!

There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during
the
MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does
pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor.

Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts,
and have taken the time to reply.

dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that
time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or
system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even
bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to
search for the desired driver one at a time.


Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site and
noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum).

I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back.
After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like it,
make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that describes
what each file is for.

oh don't get me started on the dell community forum... they actually
delete users posts without notice. and they sometimes just edit them
too because they don't like a word that you might have used. i
understand that it is dell's forum and since they sponsor it they can do
whatever they want with it, but the favoritism they show for certain
people, the uneven way they apply their own rules, and the sleazy way
they edit and delete posting without notice or explanation completely
undermines the purpose of such a forum as well as its credibility as a
place to exchange ideas. they built it to off load some of support work
from their paid staff to unpaid participants, and then they staff it
with people to police it and say it is only a users to user forum. but
then the staff that is there to moderate and police it can't help
themselves and randomly interject with offers to help people which
usually do not yield any positive results and shows favoritism. what a
complete mess. i recently wrote to dell about suggesting that they take
a hard look at the dell community forum's management, its policies, its
uneven enforcement of the policies, its moderators, and the abuses of
obsessive compulsive contributors. it is overrun by a handful of well
intentioned regulars who post so much that they don't even realize how
jaded they have become and speak in lingo and shortcuts that the typical
one off novice visitor does not understand. then it takes them four or
five additional posts to get across what they could have done in one if
they were not so sloppy and cavalier in their initial reply. i think
dell should kill the dell community forum altogether, but at very least
they should limit users posts to just a few per day. then perhaps
people would spend more time contemplating a reply and fine tuning it
instead of just polluting the place with a large volume of meaningless,
useless, and half baked answers.

ps. good to hear you solve your freezing problem. a far better outcome
than reloading the system.

Christopher Muto wrote in
:

On 12/15/2011 11:22 AM, Boris wrote:
Christopher wrote in
:

On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only
thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally
sell them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that
came with the machine, and started a repair install. But,
when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it
said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed
Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the
machine, but it
was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I
have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago
when I
did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it
worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried
a lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I
did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method),
and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is
the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the
newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that
hides on
the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really
leaning
on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having
could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and
mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works
perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause
this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is
commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose
also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge
to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is
another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on
laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be
CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff
first. Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad.
But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable
from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at
least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it,
then it is worth a shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In
the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in
the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and
optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get
this far, we can help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I
knew. I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a
couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If
the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking
the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press
and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring
back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from
the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the
past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other
Devices, is yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting
the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that
supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video
drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I
did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already
installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell
forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this
particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7
laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement
laptop.


I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was
the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so
I
didn't
bother.

Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I
remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains
drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same
Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try.
I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset
driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be
able to start
the
machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang
cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller.

Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the
ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the
touchpad
was
working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was
told that I was not the administrator. I never create an
administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the
touchpad driver.
It
installed fine.

I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife
(Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged
on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed.

I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing
was gone!!!

There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during
the
MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but
does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor.

Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long
posts, and have taken the time to reply.

dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that
time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number
or system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and
even bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only
solution is to search for the desired driver one at a time.


Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site
and noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum).

I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back.
After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like
it, make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that
describes what each file is for.

oh don't get me started on the dell community forum...

Too late.

they actually
delete users posts without notice. and they sometimes just edit them
too because they don't like a word that you might have used. i
understand that it is dell's forum and since they sponsor it they can
do whatever they want with it, but the favoritism they show for
certain people, the uneven way they apply their own rules, and the
sleazy way they edit and delete posting without notice or explanation
completely undermines the purpose of such a forum as well as its
credibility as a place to exchange ideas. they built it to off load
some of support work from their paid staff to unpaid participants, and
then they staff it with people to police it and say it is only a users
to user forum. but then the staff that is there to moderate and police
it can't help themselves and randomly interject with offers to help
people which usually do not yield any positive results and shows
favoritism. what a complete mess. i recently wrote to dell about
suggesting that they take a hard look at the dell community forum's
management, its policies, its uneven enforcement of the policies, its
moderators, and the abuses of obsessive compulsive contributors. it
is overrun by a handful of well intentioned regulars who post so much
that they don't even realize how jaded they have become and speak in
lingo and shortcuts that the typical one off novice visitor does not
understand. then it takes them four or five additional posts to get
across what they could have done in one if they were not so sloppy and
cavalier in their initial reply. i think dell should kill the dell
community forum altogether, but at very least they should limit users
posts to just a few per day. then perhaps people would spend more
time contemplating a reply and fine tuning it instead of just
polluting the place with a large volume of meaningless, useless, and
half baked answers.

ps. good to hear you solve your freezing problem. a far better
outcome than reloading the system.


I stopped going to the dell forums many years ago, when they first began
making changes. I've probably only been there 2-3 times since, as a last
resort. I did post this problem there, under the name Blindmelonball, in
the laptop general hardware forum. The answers from a (well meaning)
"Dell Community Rockstar", were farcical. I played the game, was polite,
etc., and didn't use lots of words I wanted to use, because I knew they'd
get ****y.

On 12/15/2011 4:46 PM, Boris wrote:
Christopher wrote in
:

On 12/15/2011 11:22 AM, Boris wrote:
Christopher wrote in
:

On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
wrote in
:

In . 18,
Boris wrote:
By freezing, I mean this:

I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware.
This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only
thing
that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it
possible that somebody in your household could have secretly
installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers
won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally
sell them.

I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that
came with the machine, and started a repair install. But,
when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it
said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed
Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the
machine, but it
was
a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I
have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago
when I
did
a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it
worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2.

We'll see what happens.

Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried
a lot of other stuff first.

Hi, Bill,

Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I
did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method),
and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end.

Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is
the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the
newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that
hides on
the
hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these
possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really
leaning
on
that it is a hardware problem.

I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having
could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and
mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works
perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause
this?

Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is
commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose
also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge
to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is
another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on
laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be
CPU and motherboard too.

So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff
first. Order is up to you.

1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad.
But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable
from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at
least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it,
then it is worth a shot.

2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more
sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear
everything up alone.

3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In
the
least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in
the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and
optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get
this far, we can help you there.

Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another
source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would
personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't
bother.


I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I
knew. I was not the primary user.

Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a
couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If
the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking
the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press
and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring
back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again.

And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from
the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the
past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other
Devices, is yellowed out.
Under Chipset, on the Dell site,

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04

I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting
the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that
supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video
drivers.

When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio,
video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking
drivers have been installed, and are working fine.

I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and
ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I
did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already
installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network.

I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell
forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this
particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot.

My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of
other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7
laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement
laptop.


I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was
the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so
I
didn't
bother.

Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I
remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains
drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same
Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try.
I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset
driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be
able to start
the
machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang
cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller.

Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the
ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the
touchpad
was
working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was
told that I was not the administrator. I never create an
administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the
touchpad driver.
It
installed fine.

I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife
(Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged
on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed.

I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing
was gone!!!

There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during
the
MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but
does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor.

Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long
posts, and have taken the time to reply.

dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that
time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number
or system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and
even bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only
solution is to search for the desired driver one at a time.


Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site
and noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum).

I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back.
After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like
it, make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that
describes what each file is for.

oh don't get me started on the dell community forum...

Too late.

they actually
delete users posts without notice. and they sometimes just edit them
too because they don't like a word that you might have used. i
understand that it is dell's forum and since they sponsor it they can
do whatever they want with it, but the favoritism they show for
certain people, the uneven way they apply their own rules, and the
sleazy way they edit and delete posting without notice or explanation
completely undermines the purpose of such a forum as well as its
credibility as a place to exchange ideas. they built it to off load
some of support work from their paid staff to unpaid participants, and
then they staff it with people to police it and say it is only a users
to user forum. but then the staff that is there to moderate and police
it can't help themselves and randomly interject with offers to help
people which usually do not yield any positive results and shows
favoritism. what a complete mess. i recently wrote to dell about
suggesting that they take a hard look at the dell community forum's
management, its policies, its uneven enforcement of the policies, its
moderators, and the abuses of obsessive compulsive contributors. it
is overrun by a handful of well intentioned regulars who post so much
that they don't even realize how jaded they have become and speak in
lingo and shortcuts that the typical one off novice visitor does not
understand. then it takes them four or five additional posts to get
across what they could have done in one if they were not so sloppy and
cavalier in their initial reply. i think dell should kill the dell
community forum altogether, but at very least they should limit users
posts to just a few per day. then perhaps people would spend more
time contemplating a reply and fine tuning it instead of just
polluting the place with a large volume of meaningless, useless, and
half baked answers.

ps. good to hear you solve your freezing problem. a far better
outcome than reloading the system.


I stopped going to the dell forums many years ago, when they first began
making changes. I've probably only been there 2-3 times since, as a last
resort. I did post this problem there, under the name Blindmelonball, in
the laptop general hardware forum. The answers from a (well meaning)
"Dell Community Rockstar", were farcical. I played the game, was polite,
etc., and didn't use lots of words I wanted to use, because I knew they'd
get ****y.


he is one of the better ones, but he can't shake his belife that the
'dell system software' is actually necessary. even after i fully
documented exactly what it does in a matrix of the fixes as they pertain
to specific dell computers and microsoft operating systems. he even
lists it as a necessary step for reloading windows 7 where is has zero
value. in some older systems, and with older operating systems, only
meaningful thing it did was optimize optical drive support (something
which one could also do manually). other than that the only thing it
does is enables your computer to send copies of crash reports that you
send to microsoft on to dell. and i am certain that since your machine
is well past end of life that simply do not care, and even when it was a
supported system they might have cared but didn't do anything about it.