LONG Intermittent Freeze-ups ??????

I have run into an xp home pc that is doing the Exact
Same Thing that my 1.60ghz 512 ram Pro is doing. I
thought that it was because I had a piece of junk, but
now I feel that the cause of my troubles (outside of me
having a piece of junk) is connected with something
floating around out there on the net.

My problem is........
Once I get online (I have AOL dialup), sometimes my
internet connection freezes. This has been going on for
about a couple of months now. "Not responding" shows up
on the AOL title bar as well as in Task Manager next to
the task name. Some of my issues are --I can't get a
web page thru my AOL interface, I can't get IE to come
up, I have the service that lets you know when someone is
calling you while you are online, THAT freezes up also.
(Instant messaging....everything)

Now sometimes it freezes up for only a few seconds right
after I get online, most of the time, it's for minutes(up
to 20mins). Very seldomly there are no freeze-ups at
all. At the times when I get tired of waiting for it
to "snap out of it" I would just get offline and then I
would notice that it freezes up almost all of the
functionalities of my whole system as well. Not
the "normal" hangups a pc would give you. Meaning,
if I don't have whatever program I want open already, I
would just have to wait. It will not let me open and/or
run anything until it snaps out of it If I have it
running already, I can work with it normally.

It's SO bad that I can't even open a text file, I can
create one and title it, BUT can't open it. And that's
ONLY on the desktop, because I'm not able to open any
folders at this time either. Now once the pc snaps out of
it, it's like nothing was ever wrong with the thing. All
of a sudden everything pops up out of nowhere ALL AT THE
SAME TIME. (windows, web pages, sounds, applications..
the works)
Even task manager, if I didn't have it up and running
before-hand.

I have run everything that I know of thus far and I
can't find anything out of the norm. I'm always up to
date with Mcafee, I run spybot and adaware on a regular
basis as well as other tools that I have just recently
loaded. (to find out what is going on with this thing)
hijack this, winpatrol, etc

I'm not getting anywhere closer to finding out what is
causing my long intermittent pauses. I feel that it's
something that's out on the internet because someone that
has (dialup)AT&T as an ISP, their computer is doing the
exact same thing. I'm not looking at this as a
coincidence, knowing how much stuff is floating around
out here on the World Wide Web.

If there is anyone else that has experienced this problem
themselves and gotten out of it successfully, could you
throw me a response and give me a heads up on what I'm
dealing with here. I would think that it's something that
has embedded itself in the registry and hiding extremely
well.

Appreciate any helpful info,... ANY!
THANXX N ADVANCE. The Rookie/Wayne B.

"Wayne B." wrote:

I have run into an xp home pc that is doing the Exact
Same Thing that my 1.60ghz 512 ram Pro is doing. I
thought that it was because I had a piece of junk, but
now I feel that the cause of my troubles (outside of me
having a piece of junk) is connected with something
floating around out there on the net.

My problem is........
Once I get online (I have AOL dialup), sometimes my
internet connection freezes. This has been going on for
about a couple of months now. "Not responding" shows up
on the AOL title bar as well as in Task Manager next to
the task name. Some of my issues are --I can't get a
web page thru my AOL interface, I can't get IE to come
up, I have the service that lets you know when someone is
calling you while you are online, THAT freezes up also.
(Instant messaging....everything)

Now sometimes it freezes up for only a few seconds right
after I get online, most of the time, it's for minutes(up
to 20mins). Very seldomly there are no freeze-ups at
all. At the times when I get tired of waiting for it
to "snap out of it" I would just get offline and then I
would notice that it freezes up almost all of the
functionalities of my whole system as well. Not
the "normal" hangups a pc would give you. Meaning,
if I don't have whatever program I want open already, I
would just have to wait. It will not let me open and/or
run anything until it snaps out of it If I have it
running already, I can work with it normally.

It's SO bad that I can't even open a text file, I can
create one and title it, BUT can't open it. And that's
ONLY on the desktop, because I'm not able to open any
folders at this time either. Now once the pc snaps out of
it, it's like nothing was ever wrong with the thing. All
of a sudden everything pops up out of nowhere ALL AT THE
SAME TIME. (windows, web pages, sounds, applications..
the works)
Even task manager, if I didn't have it up and running
before-hand.

I have run everything that I know of thus far and I
can't find anything out of the norm. I'm always up to
date with Mcafee, I run spybot and adaware on a regular
basis as well as other tools that I have just recently
loaded. (to find out what is going on with this thing)
hijack this, winpatrol, etc

I'm not getting anywhere closer to finding out what is
causing my long intermittent pauses. I feel that it's
something that's out on the internet because someone that
has (dialup)AT&T as an ISP, their computer is doing the
exact same thing. I'm not looking at this as a
coincidence, knowing how much stuff is floating around
out here on the World Wide Web.

If there is anyone else that has experienced this problem
themselves and gotten out of it successfully, could you
throw me a response and give me a heads up on what I'm
dealing with here. I would think that it's something that
has embedded itself in the registry and hiding extremely
well.

Appreciate any helpful info,... ANY!
THANXX N ADVANCE. The Rookie/Wayne B.