Did I manage to kill my computer?

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This is the first time that I have experienced this problem with a computer. I am trying to view this as a learning experience.

I hope that I am not the cause of the problem. When I first turned on the computer this morning it was moving quite slowly. Before I go on any further I unfortunately am one of those Aspies who has a great deal of difficulty explaining some situations using words. In this case I think it is because I do not know the technical terminology.

To try to correct the problem I manually turned off the computer and turned it back on. Got the usual screen that asks how I would it to procede to finish the chore. Thought I made the right decision which was to continue with the process.

Everything was working well until I got to Hotmail. Then the keyboard and the mouse stopped working. To be sure that the problem is with the computer I attached the mouse to this computer and it worked.
Besides that I have been having a problem that the monitor looks as though it is going spastic. This is the only way I can explain it is that it looks as though the page has been duplicated and moving rapidly from left to right. Right before the problelem would stop the screen would be moving extremely fast.
Can anyone offer any suggestions? Please! For me typing on this lap top is not easy.

What OS are you running? If it is Windows, then scrap the OS and get Ubuntu Linux. It's a free OS and MUCH better than Windows. I have used it for many years. If you have a MAC, then You need someone else who is a MAC expert, which I am not. What PC are you using and what OS (operating system)? Do other programs work OK?

I h.ave Windows 7. My custom made computer hasn't been used for aNYTHING OTHER than the Internet for months.

Hmm. You need to find someone, perhaps whoever built your computer, who can check out the hardware and software. There are lots of possibilities as to the cause of your problems. Hardware failure of the PC or monitor, or perhaps a software issue and even a virus. I wish I could help you more. Do you have any other monitors, or PC boards?

Thanks AspieWolf for your help.

As soon as the kind slightly younger man that I live arrived at our pleasant, small, humble abode he immediately worked on the computer to determine the cause for my problems. He cleaned out all the dust, turned on all the fans, 3 which allowed me to type out this message on my computer rather than his annoying lap top.

But it still is going spastic. I am finding that typing prevents it from happening. Quite strange that the problem not occur when I am using the keyboard, or if I am opening another website . Unfortunately the slightly younger man doesn't have a clue as to how to fix that situation.

Last edited by irene on 07 Sep 2012, 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, at this point I would have to suggest that you need to get some professional help as in a PC repair service, unless you know someone who is knowledgeable about PC's. Some ISP's have one in-house and most towns do as well. Good Luck!

It sounds to me as though your computer's "freezing up". It's hard to be sure from your description, and there could be many causes, but basically, it is trying to do too much all at once.

Although you might want to look into Ubuntu long term, I use it and I don't think that with your level of technical knowledge, you're necessarily going to be happy right out of the gate. Things won't be where you expect them to be, they won't work quite the same, etc. Try a Live CD before you ditch the OS. Which, by the way, is a good way to test the hardware versus the software...

You can do this. It seems much harder than it is. Google LiveCD Linux, pick one of the choices, download the software image (the file name should end in .iso) and then burn that to a CD. Now, you may have to get some help on how to change the boot menu of your computer (this is different for every model, and if this is a custom build, ask whoever built it for you) so that you can boot from this CD. Let it do its thing, surf the internet for a while on it (so your machine is good and warmed up, in case that is the problem) and see what happens. If you have no problems, it isn't the hardware, it's the software. If you do still have problems, the hardware is going south.

If it's the software, my first guess would be malware. It may not be that, but it's the first thing I'd do is run a good malware scanner, or two, or even three. (They don't all catch the same things.) I do think it sounds as if you want to find someone who knows how to do this to help you here.

If you take it in to be fixed... please, please, please, do not use the Geek Squad. Find someone who has at least a halfway decent chance of knowing what they're doing. (I just spent a couple of hours last week fixing a neighbour's computer, and the advice they gave her at the Geek Squad was so absurd, I hope the person who gave it to her was using hallucinogenic drugs at the time, because the alternative is unthinkable...)

Small computer shops are usually good. It's like restaurants: the chains can be crappy, because their advertising will pull enough people in anyway, but the small places have to be good to stay open. Computer shops are the same way. More so, in fact. Avoid the chains. Find a small shop.

Linux Ubuntu might work especially if it just used for internet browsing.

I think there is a type of install using Wubi that allows you to have both Ubuntu and the old Windows if you don't want to scrap everything.

I've sometimes wondered if I should hook up my dad with something like that. I'm not sure why but he leaves so many browser tabs open and over time his computer slows to a crawl.

It's hard to diagnose a PC problem based on someone's vague description. That'd be like a doctor trying to remotely diagnose a patient with symptoms of lethargy, dizziness and numbness in the fingers. Without actual physical testing you could play the "what if" game for years. Did you happen to open any emails when you went to Hotmail before the PC messed up? I used to build PCs and do networking so I'm not clueless to the computer scene but I'll admit there is a lot I don't know.

Are you using any firewall to protect against inbound threats (for the record....the stock Windows 7 firewall is junk) What type of network connection do you have?


I agree with the malware speculation

Maybe the best description of the problem is the screen looks as though it's on speed.

Even though I do not know how to correct the problem I do know that it has nothing to do with the content on the Internet. What I have found is that it happens most of the time if I have spent a long time reading and not using the keyboard, or interacting with it. I guess that sounds as though if I am not doing anything interactive for a long stretch of time the problem will usually start.

As a test that lovely slightly younger man will be connecting this monitor to his laptop to see if his computer acts up like mine.

Since you've been using the computer for nothing but the internet, and now it's freezing up and generally going spastic, I think that you have probably inadvertantly downloaded a trojan or a worm onto your system, and that is causing the problems that you are having.

If you have nothing on your computer that you want to save, I would suggest wiping the hard drive and reinstalling your operating system. If you reinstall Windows7, the first thing that you should do is download another internet browser such as Opera,or Firefox, and set it as your default internet browser.

You have probably helped diagnose part of the issue with this description. See below:

There is only one thing I can think of that would explain what you describe. There are programs - whether malware or perfectly legitimate utilities - that are designed to run "in the background". They will have settings, sometimes built in and sometimes specified by you, that say, essentially, "don't run until the computer has been inactive for X amount of time". If some one of these programs is going crazy, or causing a problem with another program (and I've heard of at least one case where three programs had to interact to cause a problem), that would explain the reason for your inactivity "causing" the problem.

Normally, I'd expect the opposite. If the computer is close to overload, simply typing too fast can jam the keyboard buffer and cause the whole system to freeze up and act up. (This is much more common on older computers with limited memory, but if you run too much even on a new system, it can happen.) So the fact it is doing the opposite is a pretty important clue.

Whether you pass this on to the nice young man or to a computer repair shop, I suggest you print out this comment, and pass it on to them. They'll understand what I'm trying to say better than you will, and they will know what to look for - or at least the computer repair place will, if they're good enough to bother going to. If I were dealing with this on the computer of someone I knew, I could check it out myself, but it is too complex to explain simply, or to walk someone through who doesn't understand. You basically have to check every single thing that is running in the background, to figure out what's kicking in that's causing the problem. And a lot of those things that run in the background are things you do not want to get rid of, because then your computer wouldn't work at all. So you do have to know what you're doing, but I hope that bit of insight might at least save you time / money in getting things back on track.

(If you want to put the nice young man in touch with me, if he knows enough about computers, I can try to give him a better explanation, if he doesn't quite get it, but I would say that unless he's pretty sure in the end he knows what not to do, it would be time to get someone who does know what to do and not to do to look at it. You've mostly isolated the problem, it's something in the background - could be malware or could be something else that's become corrupted or had its settings messed up - that's kicking in and causing the trouble. Although I wish I could see a video of your screen when it's doing this: I have the feeling if I knew exactly what it was doing, I'd understand a whole lot more about what was going on. Anyway, it's a software problem. Or at least, caused by software. It could still be a hardware problem that only shows up when certain software kicks in and puts too much stress on the hardware, but that's the last thing to check, really. Figure out what's kicking in, and unless it is essential, get rid of it. If it's essential, find out if it's working properly. If not, fix / reinstall it. If it is, then it would be time to look at hardware.)

Thanks, theWanderer, for your message.

As soon as my monitor is disconnected from this pain in the ass laptop and it's reconnected to my desktop I'll be able to take a video of the problem to post it.

other than the fact that it's not easy typing on this computer I haven't come across any problems. I have been using for several hours.

Glad to know that the info I provided was helpful

My money is on a hardware issue, not software. You should find a local "computer guy" to come in and take a look and see what's wrong, and how you can go about fixing it.

Okay, I am not infallible. You could very well be right. But, what hardware issue would cause the video display to go crazy after the keyboard had been idle for some time? I'm asking because I'm really puzzled what you think this is, and I'll go crazy wondering what could do that.