"not responding"

[ahopeter]

alot of times lately, when especially using my email, all of a sudden when i try to do something like hit the compose button, the email freezes up..and it does nothing.  the little microsoft icon in the top right corner keeps moving yet nothing else happens...regardless of what i press.  so i hit "control" "alt" and "delete" and then it says "not responding"...any ideas what may be causing this?  i virus scanned and all clear.

[Carskick]

What E-Mail program are you using? There may be a patch for it.

[ahopeter]

hi, im using yahoo!!!

[Mark H]

It could be Yahoo that is having the problems if the problem just started.

Mark H

[ahopeter]

actaully i just noticed that it isnt just yahoo... it seems to happen at random at no matter what i am doing...including other programs outside of the internet?

[Mark H]

Have you scanned for malware and have all the windows patches? It could be a hardware problem as well - maybe memory? Another possibility is some software conflicts.

Download http://www.memtest86.com/ and run it to test your memory.

What is running? Goto task manager to see and let us know.

Mark H

[ahopeter]

Mark H., sorry but i am really lost not comp friendly at all... how do i scan for malware?
i have no window patches, unless they were prompted for me to do(like windows updates?).  
i also went to the link you supplied but i am not sure which item i should download.
where can i find task manager?
so sorry i am being so difficult about this.

[Mark H]

You can download spybot and/or ad-aware from the download page of this site. Once installed, update them by clicking the search for updates links in either program. Once updated, do scans of your PC with them.

As for task manager, you right click your task bar and then select task manager assuming you are using a version of windows that has this feature.

What version of Windows are you using?

As for memtest86, download version 3 or 3.1 for windows. Your memory is probably OK, but it never hurts to rule it out.

[ahopeter]

i am doing spybot check now...says i have 6 "DSO Exploits"?

i checked taskbar and this, and spybot are the only programs running.

i am using winxp home.

[ahopeter]

when i try memtest, it says "windows cannot open this file"

and with spybot, it initially gave me a whole list of stuff.. then i rescanned and now it says"congratulations no immediate threats"
\

adaware found two items and removed them.

[Neon]

memtest cannot be run from within Windows. You have to put it on a floppy and boot from it. There are instructions on the memtest site.

[ahopeter]

oohhh.  thanks