Sony Lap-Top Playing Silly Sods.

[Joe]

I'm currently having trouble with my Sony Vaio VGN-NR21J/S. This is running Vista Home Premium with all up-dates.

The problem is this: after being asleep it freezes up. Clicking things on the Task Bar, Quick Launch Bar or Notification Area has no effect though already opened applications can be got to via Alt-Tab.

   

After about five minutes it gets its act together and works fine.

I haven't installed any new software, though some, including Windows itself, will have self-updated.

I've already tried CHKDSK, defrag-ing, SFC and running the hardware tests for the memory and CPU; none of which have found any problems.

This the list of of Services:-

  Services.txt (Size: 38.32 KB / Downloads: 120)

Any advise would be much appreciated. I'm far from keen on the nuclear option of doing a full OS re-install as all the up-dates would take ages to re-download.

Thanks

Joe

[camallison]

Sounds like the trackpad driver is corrupt or, if you are using a mouse, the mouse driver. Alternatively, the USB ports may have the option allow to sleep to save power.

Colin

[Joe]

The mouse pointer will move OK but nothing happens as a result. Normally if it's hovered over, say, the battery logo in the Notification Area a balloon will pop up showing the state of charge but when it's in its strange mood it doesn't.

At the moment I'm running a full scan with Malwarebytes to see if that finds anything.

Cheers

Joe

[camallison]

It all sounds like a typical (old) problem that Vista had with the USB interfaces going to sleep and only half wakening for a while. The solutions were always those I gave earlier.

Colin

PS - some trackpads, particularly on old Sony laptops, are/were driven via the USB bus.

[Nick]

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/63567-...Management

or, more generally:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/searc...TypeScope=

Full o/s restore is the absolute last hope of the desperate and should NEVER be necessary (in 18 years of professional Windows use with many many 100s of systems, I've never had to do that).

Remember: DON'T PANIC

[Joe]

I've heard you say that before, Nick, which is why I was loathe to do it. I certainly wasn't panicking as it's been going on for a while, so long in fact that I couldn't remember when which meant that a system restore wasn't an option.

Malwarebytes found 32 problems, none of them alarming.

  MBAM-log-2014-01-26 (20-39-32).txt (Size: 8.28 KB / Downloads: 160)

Fixing these made no odds but after looking at Nick's links I found a task scheduled to run at log on and removing that has, thus far at least, dealt with things nicely.

Thanks for the assistance.

Joe

[Nick]

I've heard you say that before, Nick, which is why I was loathe to do it. I certainly wasn't panicking as it's been going on for a while, so long in fact that I couldn't remember when which meant that a system restore wasn't an option.

Apologies if I sounded "preachy" - its not intentional - I just want to cry when people resort to "solutions" involving re-installing the planet - its a double whammy - a waste of time and no understanding gained of the underlying issue so you are doomed to "ground-hog day" if/when the problem re-occurs...

I'm glad you resolved the issue - I should have thought of that myself - the 5 minutes before everything returns to normal bit was the giveaway...

FWIW, I (along with almost everyone else) hate Vista - its very slow, buggy & memory hungry. If you can stomach it, a switch to Windows 7 (VGN-NR21J/S seems to support that) or Windows 8.1 would probably be a good plan...

[Refugee]

It must have been trying to start something that had been uninstalled.
Uninstall software is not all that good. Last time I had to get rid of something I used a search that looked inside files for the item I was looking for and then used an editor to remove it form the registry and so on.

[Nick]

It must have been trying to start something that had been uninstalled..

Not necessarily - lots of things which quite legitimately run at startup or on login can take a while - anything network orientated is a good candidate (e.g. Skype), as is the startup of tools supplied by the OEM, e.g. CPU or system health monitors etc.

[Joe]

You don't come over as "preachy," Nick: I took it as inspiration.

I think this machine is old enough to run XP but Vista does have a few touches that I like; the photo viewer is better and I like the fact that when renaming files you have to make a special effort to alter the extension whereas it's all to easy to do it accidentally on XP.

Windows 7 or 8 I'd have to buy, and I'm far from keen on trying the latter, so it would make more sense to buy another computer with it already on.

Cheers

Joe