Intermittant system slowdown. Upon occurrence I find a process hogging cpu cycles. Most commonly IExplorer is the program involved, however, other programs cause the problem as well.

As far as I can tell the problem only happens when the process is loaded from NextSTART or WorkShelf. The only way to stop the offending program is to kill it by rebooting or from the Task Manager. If the process is killed by Task Manager then most all programs launched by NextSTART or WorkShelf thereafter fail to terminate without reboot or use of Task Manager. Reboot establishes normal operation until next time.

Because of the intermittant nature of the problem it has taken me awhile to see a pattern of involvement with Winstep. I think this started after I installed Winstep V8.2 sometime in March 2008. Presently I am running V8.5.

I have been unable to discover a sequence of events or a method of reproducing this problem. It just happens.

Is anybody else having a similar problem? Does anybody have any ideas? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
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Windows XP Pro, SP3 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 - 4GB Memory - GeForce 7600 Display Adapter - Winstep Xtreme 8.5

Wouldn't that be because WorkShelf and NextSTART are precisely the programs you would always use to launch your most favorite applications (like IE)?

Also, don't forget XP SP3 was released on April 14, which more or less also coincides with the date you started noticing this problem.

I'm saying this because all Winstep Xtreme does is launch the application - after that it 'cleans its hands' and has nothing more to do with it.

One thing you could do is to use ProcessMonitor from Sysinternals to try and find out what IE is up to when it decides to use all those CPU cycles.

Also, the way you describe what happens when you kill the offending process, makes me think that *something* might be hooking into all those processes - when you kill the process in task manager whatever is hooking into it goes into an undetermined state, which would explain why all the other processes then fail to exit properly.

An example of a process that seems to hook into other processes is Logitech's SetPoint - in my case, when Outlook decides to hang because of its poor handling of IMAP accounts, all special keys and mouse buttons stop working until Outlook is terminated (or resumes working again).

WorkShelf and NextSTART were used to launch applications long before the problem started. It seems the problem might possibly coincide with my update from version 7 to version 8.


This is something to think about.


I don't use SetPoint. I have been using Microsoft's IntelliPoint. I have removed it to see if this has an effect on the problem.


This I have tried but I don't think I properly interpreted the results. I need to educate myself how all of the processes hook together. The only thing I can say with a little certainty is Process Explorer indicated iexplore.exe was started by NextSTART. (I think I knew that without the aid of Proc Exp.)

My aplogy if this message seems to be a rebuttal of your ideas and suggestions. Is not meant to be that. I have been trying to pin this down for several months and I have considered many of the same things you have.

I will continue to troubleshoot this when the problem next occurs. Please post any ideas or tips that may help.
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Windows XP Pro, SP3 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 - 4GB Memory - GeForce 7600 Display Adapter - Winstep Xtreme 8.5

Oh, I just gave SetPoint as an example - doubt very much Microsoft's ItelliPoint does the same thing. Logitech, on the other hand, are usually known for having some great hardware but pretty lousy software.

The problem could be caused by a MILLION things - including your current AV software, for instance, or an interaction between drivers/software - and is probably quite specific to your system.

Those are the hardest problems to correct, because without professional diagnostic tools and a good knowlege of what you are doing, it is very difficult to identify the culprit - except by trial and error, maybe.



Hehe.



Good luck, and will do!