Computer freezes

I've got a Dell Dimension running Windows XP which has just this week started to jam. The screen goes to the basic desktop but no icons are present. Only solution so far appears to be to turn it off and restart. I've done a virsus scan (clean), degrag (started to run a bit faster), disk clean-up, have all the avail MS downloads, have Norton running fulltime, etc. When I do ALT-CTL-DEL, Processes is running at 99% when idle. Anyone got any ideas whats going on?

First thing is to get the Dell diagnostics for your machine and run these. They may already be installed in a hidden partition and available for booting from the post BIOS test boot menu - if not you can download them from Dell and burn a CD to boot from. They are pretty good at detecting basic hardware problems. If these don't detect any hardware problems then it would perhaps suggest a software (e.g. Windows) software/configuration problem. In this case check the Windows event log (right click on My Computer choose Manage and then go to Event Viewer and look for significant error or warning events in the System and Application logs). Another test might be to download a live bootable GNU/Linux distribution and boot from that to rule out any hardware issues.

ProcessExplorer is a much better task manager (free from Microsoft Sysinternals) than the Windows built in Task Manager. Get this to check which process is hogging the machine when you hit on problems.

That's a great app Clubman. Amazing just how much stuff (Crap?) is running in the background.