MikeP

Well I might have slagged XP off a bit prematurely. Doing research I have found that my added memory to my Evo N115 laptop was excessive as 256+256, specs only recommend 384 RAM. But as I put it in at the same time I bought the laptop I have always had the problem - and it varied with XP security patches. Anyway now ive edited my boot.ini file to restrict the memory to 384 loading and its just great now - Ive tried my best to hang it but it still goes on. But having now reported the fact I hope it still behaves Thanks for the comments. Mike

I have just found the hp communities site. I may have been premature in criticising XP. It would seem the EVO115 may have been a bad choice for laptop. There are multiple other customers with the same prob. In particular hardware/firmware incompatibilities. For instance most of us add memory from Crucial or others and not Compaq (which is Winbond anyway) There seems to be a problem with memory incompatibility not matching added memory by manufacturer. Although normally if Crucial says theres is compatible, i.e. speed, latency etc u would think it was OK. Who would buy memory from compaq at the price they charge? Of course as the computer is now about a year old, they dont even want to provide us with further firmware upgrades!

If you want to download the patches/hotfixes manually you can find them all on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search....?displaylang=en Its the microsoft downloads centre. But its best to do windows update first and note down the fixes your machine says it needs. Mike

Fortunately I can reimage back to a stable period. My problem is that I spend more time frigging about with it than using the programmes! However XP should be intelligent.

I would be interested to know whether any one else using windows xp pro has a problem with the system totally freezing for no real reason. As a help, when it goes, the hard drive light just kicks out and everything just freezes, you cant even use alt_ctrl_del to bring up the task manager. Usually this happens after software has been added or removed. It usually happens anytime, on just boot, or particularly doing defrag. If I do a selective reboot using msconfig to disable startup and services, then its ok if i carry out a defrag operation like that. So it could be a change in the settings. Once I get it right its ok. WHy is XP so sensitive, if MS keep preaching that its the best thing since sliced bread, then why to a lot of guys prefer to stick to their 2000 or 98SE!!

Thanks for your input guys. Darkavenger: Yes I know, I immediately used a separate mouse to elliminate the tracker pad. Also I check compaq site for updates. Also I am on a LAN with a desktop but all the machines have had manual IPs put in. One point to note, is that I always recommend that you take screen shots of things like services menu in msconfig.sys and IE6 advanced settings - because I have known service update patches to change things! Fortunately when ever I get things stable I image the whole drive in PowerQuest Drive Image! However as MS preach about the wonders of XP, BUT a lot of IP pros still use win2K!, its a pity its not a stable as it should be. Mind you it has so much in a combined platform for professionals as well as gamsters, its no surprise that its not perfect. Any further tips would help. Mike

Hi All: I consider myself quite an IT expert. But my desktop which has 98SE on it for years is great and stable. Never a crash. Last year I bought a Compaq Evo N115 laptop with XP pro preinstalled. It was always freezing i.e. cannot get out by using Alt Cont Del etc. It was much better when I installed SP1, stable a lot of the time. However again mainly when I install windows security updates etc. it can become unstable. And I mean literally freezes and only the power switch reboot will get it back. Now I am aware of msconfig.sys and the start up groups and what should be running etc. I also use defrag regularly and programmes like Norton Win Doctor and things like Easydesk registry cleaners. Never a problem. I am sure there are many things that can cause freezes. But is there any obvious things to check. Hope to get feedback before I throw it out of the window!