Sometimes, when XP hangs, TaskManager show two copies of Excel or Windows Explorer, and notes "NOT R

July 20, 2007

1. I have taken to right-clicking on the Desktop icon, and selecting OPEN,

rather than double-clicking, in the superstition that perhaps I might have

triple-clicked or something. Consider those times when I try to open Excel,

and a blank document comes up, but the program is totally unresponsive.

Then I go to Task Manager and see two listings, both saying NOT RESPONDING.

Selecting either or both of these and hitting END TASK does absolutely

nothing that I can see. Further, selecting SHUTDOWN does not work. There

is nothing for it but to hold the hardware power button down until the

computer shuts down. This can't be doing much good for the OS, but I have

no choice, when it is hung like that.

2. As far as I can remember, it is pretty much the same when Windows

Explorer is shown twice in TaskManager as NOT RESPONDING.

After I screw up my courage, and resign myself to buying a lot of new (non

MS) software $$! that will function with Vista, and have dumped vital data

files, etc., onto DVDs, I will buy and install Vista. Whatever corruption I

now suffer from should not be there in a new OS.

But I would like some chance that I can learn why the XP Pro OS now hangs in

the situations described above. I have other hang problems, but I restrict

this post to cases mentioned in ¶ 1 and 2.

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