I see many messages about this problem. I have been experiencing the same issue for a number of months. Only recently did I see that it was associated with the Norton idle scan. I am running XP with SP3. I have Norton Internet Security version 18.6.0.29. I have verified that when I have idle scan set to Silent for 1 day, the freeze does not occur for a day.
I believe I completely removed the previous antivirus prior to putting Norton on my PC. It appears that Windows Explorer is freezing but other programs seem to continue to run in the background. Unfortunately, to regain control, I need to do a hard reboot of my pc.
Additional info: I have Mozy backup running. For 2 weeks I suspended Mozy backup and the PC still froze during Norton Idle time scans.
B
Bweber wrote:
...when I have idle scan set to Silent for 1 day, the freeze does not occur for a day.
Hi Bweber,
I am unclear on what setting you are referring to here, as there is no way to turn off Idle Time Quick Scans. What I suggest you do is to change the Idle TIme Out setting in Norton's Miscellaneous Settings to 1 minute. That way, when your PC has been idle for only a minute the Quick Scan should run and complete within a minute or two. If you have a longer time out set, you would need to leave the PC idle for a longer period to allow the process to start. If Idle Quick Scans cannot find an idle period they will eventually run in non-idle time, which is not what you want.
I rebooted my computer after the last freeze and did a full scan. It completed without a problem
When Norton does an idle scan, it appears that it frequently freezes Windows Explorer. Until I find out why, I would not want to increase the likelihood that freezes will occur by settting the idle scan wait time shorter.
The idea is to get the Idle Quick Scan to run when you are not using the computer. Setting a short time out period increases the odds of the scan starting and completing quickly while you are away from the computer. If the time out period is too long the scan will end up running when you are trying to use the PC and, yes, depending on your system specs, this might slow you down for a few minutes.
Did you ever find a fix? I'm having the same problem. I've been using the Silent Mode -1 Day feature also; trying to prevent the freeze, and having to unplug my computer if I miss it.
I have a similar problem to the original poster, and if it is indeed the same issue, it is not about a slow-running system. Windows Explorer experiences a hard freeze, and the computer must be rebooted. You can move the mouse pointer around and interact with some programs for a short time, presumably until they need hard drive access and try to talk to explorer.exe. The taskbar becomes unresponsive, and ctrl-alt-del has no effect.
I've spent quite some time trying to track my own issue down, chasing everything from power management to a BIOS update before finally realizing that every time I come back to my computer to find it frozen, the Norton Idle Time Scan notification is visible on-screen. I've set the idle time scan to off to see if this issue disappears.
(I am running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit SP1 with Norton Antivirus 18.6.0.29, Intel Core i7 X980, 12GB RAM, Intel 600 GB SSD.)
Update for my case:
My case has turned out not to be NAV-related. Disabling the idle-time scan did not work, so I finally bit the bullet and went the long route of disabling all startup processes in msconfig, re-enabling them a few at a time. This finally solved the problem -- no freeze after idle.
I haven't narrowed it down completely, but in case it helps anyone, one of these processes was the culprit on my machine:
- CreativeCTSched
- CTxfiHlp
- DT HWP
- Macrovision FLEXnet Connect
- Macro Key Manager Application
- PivotSoftware
- RemoTerm.exe
- TomTomHOME.exe
- Sonic INSTALLit! Setup