[masterelyt]

I have just purchased an off-lease computer from an online warehouse company. The computer is a Dell Inspiron 530, with integrated graphics and 2gb DDR2 Samsung RAM. Once my computer has been running for about half an hour or so, it will lock up for about 7 seconds, then unlock for a bit, repeating this process. A reset will fix this problem temporarily. In between lockups, I managed to get into the task manager and under the "Performance" tab, every time it locked up, the usage of my first core would skyrocket to 100%, the second core showed no jump in usage. I could not pinpoint the process which is causing this because each time a lockup would occur, under the "Processes" tab, it would read no spikes in CPU usage.

I have removed one of the sticks of RAM to see if it was the culprit. If the lockup occurs again, I will try to replace the stick I left in with the on that I removed. I am actually using the computer on which this problem occurs, running with only 1 RAM stick. It seems to be working for now. But I have a feeling that a lockup will occur again shortly. Any help or info would be appreciated.

I have uploaded a screen shot of Task Manager at the time of a series of lockups. Here is the link: http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/d...relyt/asdf.jpg

[masterelyt]

I just encountered another lockup, so I know that it's not the one RAM stick that I removed. So, I'm trying the other one just to see if that will work. Although, I have a hunch that RAM is not the culprit.

[Frank4d]

It looks like you have some process that spikes at regular intervals. If you click the Processes tab, then the CPU tab to sort by CPU usage, do you see a process using a lot of CPU at regular intervals?

Note: if you don't see a CPU tab, click View > Select Columns, and check the box for CPU Usage.

[masterelyt]

How would I figure out which process is causing this?

[Frank4d]

If Task Manager doesn't show it clearly, try Process Explorer which is like an advanced version of Task Manager: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896653.aspx

Click View > System Information. If you hover the mouse cursor over the CPU usage spikes it will show the names of the processes that caused them.

[masterelyt]

Okay I am awaiting another lock up. But meanwhile, I am only running on one ram stick right now (1GB), so I was wondering if there is ANY chance at all that it might be ram compatibility issues, although I doubt it because this RAM came with the computer, but it came with Vista and I have fresh installed XP Pro SP3.

[masterelyt]

Okay so I just had another lockup, and with Process Explorer installed, I managed to find out that the process which is spiking is called "procexp.exe". Not sure what it does but it seemed to be consistent.

[masterelyt]

Hmm, seems as if that is the Process Explorer...