Originally Posted by sklow

Hoping someone out there can help me. I am currently running Vista Home Premium x64 on a 4GB 2.2GHz Intel Core2 Duo Dell XPS m1530 laptop.

I turned on my computer this morning and found that after starting up, everything looks fine until I try to do anything like open My Computer or Mozilla. At this point, if I do anything, the entire computer freezes and Ctrl-Alt-Del won't even work. When I boot the computer up in Safe Mode with Networking, the computer doesn't freeze and it is from here that I am typing my plea for help.

I have already scanned for malware and viruses have found none. I have not installed any new programs recently and I have already tried a system restore to a time when this problem was nonexistent. I have also disabled my usual startup programs to no avail.

I am hoping for a solution which won't call for reinstalling of the OS because I am on vacation and won't be able to get access to my Vista Installation DVD until the end of August.

So any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.
SKLow

Type compmgmt.msc in run window and hit enter. computer management window will open,

select device manager, in the right pane expand display adapters.

right click on your display adapter,and click on disable.



Restart your computer, check the problem persists.

Keep us informed

edit : by this we can check whether this is happening due to your display adapter

While I have found problems using MSCONFIG in Windows Vista, I think that this case would justify it's use.

Open it up (go to Start and type in "msconfig" (without the quotes) and press Enter)
Click on the Startup tab
Uncheck any non-Microsoft entries and click OK
Click on "Restart" in the next window.

When the computer restarts, check to see if the freezing is present (don't use IE yet - it has it's own troubleshooting procedure).
If it doesn't freeze, then go to Start and type in "iexplore -extoff" (without the quotes) and press Enter to launch Internet Explorer with Add-Ons disabled.

Use the computer for a bit to see if it freezes. If not, then close IE and reopen it normally (with add-ons). Use it a bit more to see if it freezes.

If it doesn't freeze at all, then one of the things you disabled in MSCONFIG is the cause.
If it doesn't freeze until you open IE normally - then it's probably an add-on in IE that's causing it.
If it still freezes as it was doing, then it's something else.

Please let us know the results of this testing and we'll move on from there.

PS - don't forget to reset MSCONFIG to Normal startup when you're done troubleshooting.