Alright I'm gonna treat this the same way I would a problem with my car. I've got a Dell Dimension 4600 desktop that's about 5 years old. It has a 40GB HD and 512MB RAM. Recently after sitting at idle for around a half an hour I get a message from my nVidia desktop manager telling me that my application explorer has stopped responding and asks me if I would like to continuing managing as it may cause other programs to become unresponsive. Whether I choose yes or no the computer basically freezes and takes 10 minutes to open programs and 5 minutes just to play a song so I cut power and reboot. After doing this it will be fine until I let it sit for 30 minutes again.

Any ideas?

your can could be dirty or cloged inside the computer, make sure its clean, because if that gets clogged, computer runs very slow.

I actually didn't even think of that thanks.

BTW, just thought I'd add that I run SpySweeper every night so there are no spyware problems.

It could be overheating. Dirt/dust could be causing this.

You could also have spyware/malware/etc since no spyware program catches all of it.

What is nvidia desktop manager? Do you have an nvidia graphics card? It might be the start of hardware failure and you may need a new card.

off hand, I don't know if thats an Intel or AMD chip in there, but on old Intels the plastic bracket that holds the heatsink on the processor is known to become brittle and crack/break. This allows the chip to roast, getting in the ballpark of 85* C before the chip begins to throttle itself to prevent damage. You could have a lot of dust built up there too, causing the whole system to run too hot.
If you smoke or someone smokes in your house, the inside of your computer gets covered in tar and other nasty crap. That stuff's a lot of fun to clean off, and can wreck all kinds of problems.
Have you installed anything recently? That could have screwed something up, if the install failed and left partial entries in the computers registry.
You said it only does it after 30min? So if you use the computer for that time, it stays fine? If thats the case, it could be a problem with the screen saver you have picked. If the file became corrupt, say from a power outage, it'll cause trouble too.

Besides working at a mechanic's shop, I fix computers for people out of my house haha

Jesse

It's an old Dell, of course it's an Intel. Dell boycotted AMD for a long time, until the 64 series processors were released and gave the Pentium 4 a beating.

I'd download mbm5 (google it) and check your CPU temps. That will let you know if you're overheating. It could also be a bad ram module. I've had that with a previous system. Sometimes it would random reboot, or it would hang a lot. Turned out that one of the ram modules were bad.

When you let your system idle, do you let it go into suspend or sleep mode?

I used to work for Level 2 Dell tech support, now I'm tier 2 desktop support of Charles Schwab....

That is a software problem, good to clean it out still, but def a software issue. Best way would be to use event viewer to see what application is causing it. Goto Dell website and update all of your Drivers.

I noticed a butt load of processess running on my laptop. Im running XP pro is it possible for you to list what processes I really need so I can shut down what I don't?

X2 with Herc?

Processes depend on what you've installed and need running. It's hard to say whether you need this or that without having the system in front of you.

However, this might be of some use: http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

OK well I cleaned out most of the dust and came back after school and still got the error message so it seems that wasn't causing it.

SpySweeper is one of the best spyware removal tools out there right now so I trust it. Plus, when it's working fine the computer isn't running slow like it would if it had spyware.

I have an nVidia GeForce 6200 graphics card and it came with a small program I guess you can call it that handles a lot of the settings of the card and comes with a "Desktop Manager" which is giving me the error. Graphics are working fine so I'm not sure if the card is the problem but I am going to disable the Desktop Manager to see what happens.

I am running an Intel Pentium 4 processor. Someone on ClubGP also suggested a crack heatsink of some sort. No one smokes in my house and the screen saver is the standard Windows XP one so I don't think that's the problem either.

When the system idles it goes to the screen saver and then a black screen, I'm gonna guess this is suspend. I do this because I have to be logged in for SpySweeper to do its scan everyday at 2 a.m.

I'm going to look into the overheating and the software issues. I don't think it's overheating though because it's fine after a reboot. Mike, any suggestions on how/what to look at the software problems?

Thanks for all the help guys, the last thing I need right now is to buy a new computer.

The best way to find out what processes are running that you don't know what they are, is just Google the name and decide if you need it.

Look at whats taken up the most CPU usage and thats more then likely the cause. you want "System Idle Process" to be in the 90's when you are not moving the mouse, if not, find out what else is running.

Ok I'm working on doing that right now. I've looked up svchost.exe and it seems like it's a necessary process but should I really have 10 of them running?

free.grisoft.com
download the free version of AVG update it and run a full scan.

x2. I use their anti virus and anti spyware. Both free and good.