[Greg Elmassian]

JJ, the "two screens" open: are they both IE7 browser screens, or are they any 2 windows programs?

Try doing all the windows updates. If you do not like IE7, just uninstall it.

After that decision, run all the windows updates from microsoft.

Then email me, I'll turn you on to the best fixit programs I have found that are free.

Regards, Greg

 

[Greg Elmassian]

I think it's only on AMD systems, and only on some. What I found that sp3 tries to load the wrong APCI (I think that's the right acronym), loading one for an Intel processor. There's a patch on the site to make it so this does not happen.

Most of my experience is with non-amd, but for the few AMD laptops we have, no problems with SP3.

I'm wondering if a good clean will help things.

Regards, Greg

 

[Greg Elmassian]

It does also teach a lesson... that it had to be happening no matter what was running, so JJ must of been in IE most of the time.

Next time, just leave the computer idling, nothing running... then JJ would have found it locked up with nothing running.

Then the suggestions would have gone in the right direction. Part of getting a good answer is getting good info to work with.

The next time, I hope no one is insulted when some statements are questioned.

Regards, Greg

 

[Greg Elmassian]

It's par for the course JJ!

I had a friend come over last night with a very similar problem... "always dies when installing flash player"... turns out the computer was crashing so often, that after rebooting, it kept trying to finish the install of the flash player.

Turns out it was a bad video card! I brought the computer up into the CMOS setup screen (nowhere near even booting windows) and it crashed there!

Computers are no longer simple to debug, and I'm afraid it's going to get more complex before someone finally takes a shotgun to them! (And I won't blame him a bit!)..

Regards, Greg