Backstory:
I used to help out a friend's mother with her work computer when she got viruses, but never went much beyond that. They had a difficult problem the other day and I told them it would probably take much more work to troubleshoot and they should use their main IT guy that they had been using. She said "oh, he's dead".
So now they're desperate for help and I'm trying to fix this for them, however they are only open 8am-5:30pm and I work 8:30-4:30pm so I have 1hr of my lunch break and 1hr after work to try and help them.
Problem:
The computer(Windows XP) will lock up after being online for about 2 minutes and seemingly depending on what programs are opened. At first I found some viruses with a Malwarebytes scan, but I took the drive out and scanned it and it's fully clean now.
Oddest part of the problem, it appears to only happen when the Ethernet cable is plugged in. I was able to run a full scan and install multiple programs with the Ethernet cable out and the computer never locked up. With the network cable in, the odd thing is it's not network connectivity that freezes -- but the entire computer becomes unusable. Task manager won't open, and everything else will stop responding. The only way to get around the problem is to hard power the machine.
I'm going there tonight with the intent to try and remove 1 stick of RAM and/or run a diagnostics CD on the PC. Beyond that I am out of ideas. Has anyone heard of this problem before? I'd really like to help them but I might have to tell them to hire someone that can look at the PC full-time if I can't figure this one out.
I used to help out a friend's mother with her work computer when she got viruses, but never went much beyond that. They had a difficult problem the other day and I told them it would probably take much more work to troubleshoot and they should use their main IT guy that they had been using. She said "oh, he's dead".
So now they're desperate for help and I'm trying to fix this for them, however they are only open 8am-5:30pm and I work 8:30-4:30pm so I have 1hr of my lunch break and 1hr after work to try and help them.
Problem:
The computer(Windows XP) will lock up after being online for about 2 minutes and seemingly depending on what programs are opened. At first I found some viruses with a Malwarebytes scan, but I took the drive out and scanned it and it's fully clean now.
Oddest part of the problem, it appears to only happen when the Ethernet cable is plugged in. I was able to run a full scan and install multiple programs with the Ethernet cable out and the computer never locked up. With the network cable in, the odd thing is it's not network connectivity that freezes -- but the entire computer becomes unusable. Task manager won't open, and everything else will stop responding. The only way to get around the problem is to hard power the machine.
I'm going there tonight with the intent to try and remove 1 stick of RAM and/or run a diagnostics CD on the PC. Beyond that I am out of ideas. Has anyone heard of this problem before? I'd really like to help them but I might have to tell them to hire someone that can look at the PC full-time if I can't figure this one out.
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