Desktop Frozen but Active

[BinaryBoy]

I have a strange issue whereby if I leave my desktop for a long period of time, say an hour or more, then when I return the desktop is frozen. I usually am able to wiggle the mouse after a few tries, but often times thats all that responds. Other times a wait of up to 5 minutes will be sufficient for the desktop to become responsive again. Now for the strange part...... the computer is is on a LAN and all of the other networked computers can access all of the shared drives on the PC without a hiccup while its desktop is frozen as they normally would.

I've considered it might be some type of power saving glitch, but the fact that other PC's get to the drives steers me away from that. I have tried the {shift x 5} trick, but it works only sometimes, most times not.

I only noticed this behavior after I installed the graphics card listed.
EVGA 01G-P3-N945-LR GeForce 9400 GT 1GB DDR2 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card

Any ideas?

 

[Lordbob75]

Bad drivers, incompatible card, some other crazy error.

Have you reinstalled drivers?

~Lordbob

 

[BinaryBoy]

Perhaps USB

Whilst continuing to search for answers I ran across some thread mentioning a similar problem and it had something to do with a bad usbupdate.exe file? So just for giggles I unplugged my thumbdrive and rebooted, and I have not had the problem since then. I have NOT plugged it back in yet. But I will soon to see if the problem reoccurs.

 

[Lordbob75]

That sort of makes sense BinaryBoy.

You could try updating your USB drivers, that might fix it.

~Lordbob

 

[BinaryBoy]

Unplugged USB

After I removed my USB thumbdrive and rebooted my computer, I left the PC on for several days. During this period I did not insert a thumbdrive, and during this period the issue did not occur. However, I plugged a thumbdrive in yesterday to copy some files, and today the problem is back. If this is a outdated driver issue, I'm at a loss because Windows 7 seems to find the latest drivers for all peripherals automatically. I have no idea what I need to update to address this problem.

 

[Lordbob75]

Well that does seem to point to the flash drives. It is ANY flash drive that will do that, and not just the one?

Where are you plugging in the flash drive? If you are plugging it into the front, then try the back or vice versa.

If it still occurs on OTHER USB ports, then you should try updating your motherboard (and hopefully USB) drivers from your manufacturer's website.

~Lordbob