After sitting idle my Windows XP computer sometimes freezes and must be powered off to restart.  Similarly, frequently after Windows Update runs and restarts, the computer freezes at the shutting down message, and has to be powered off.
It doesn't seem to matter which, if any, programs are up and running at the time. When it freezes while idle, there is not even a monitor signal - no combination of keystrokes or mouse movements will bring it back. With the Windows Update freeze, the monitor come up when I press a key or move the mouse, but it's stuck at "windows is shutting down" and clearly has been for some time.7 people need an answerI do too
December 13th, 2009 6:07am

It sounds like you have hardware problems. At least that's where I'd start my troubleshooting if it were here in the shop. http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigComputerStore/GeekSquad).MS-MVP - Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
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December 13th, 2009 4:35pm

I have been having a similar problem for about the same length of time. My PC sits idle on my desk for any length of time, especially over night and in the morning it will freeze. I've even left it after a fresh reboot (nothing running other that what comes up at startup) and the same thing will happen. Each time it freezes it requires a power down/up to clear. Symantic shows no known viruses.
January 5th, 2010 6:40pm

I now have this problem, and it only happened after updating my laptop extensively. I've been using it for many months without any sign of freezing - as soon as I updated, the freezing began. If it is hardware, then prior to updating Windows didn't know there was a problem.
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February 5th, 2010 7:07am

Mine does the same thing, but it seems like since I installed Kapersky is when it started.
February 15th, 2010 5:38am

I don't believe it is hardware as the issue started after up grading to winsows 7 I'm sorry micro soft hasn't addressed the issue as I'm certain they must be aware of this situation. Oh buy the way I did'nt upgrade from XP I up graded from Vista.
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March 1st, 2010 6:59pm

Although I'm not a 100% sure about the cause, it seems like in my case this was related to my network card. The card goes to sleep after sitting idle for a while and then has trouble waking up when I start working on the computer again. I'm actually using my wireless network connection most of the time and my LAN card just showed as unplugged. Now that I actually disabled it, it seems like the freezing up after sitting idle for a while is no longer an issue, i.e. my system hasn't frozen at all after being left idle numerous times. Therefore, it probably has to do with the driver for my network card (Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller v6.227.902.2009) but it says my driver is up-to-date so no relief there. As always if you don't need the driver disable it or uninstall if you know you'll never use it. Unfortunately, you might not find this following the clean boot suggestions as it seems like it's functioning normally when you start up but it stops working after the system sits idle for a while and then tries to "wake up" again.
October 1st, 2010 4:39pm

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