My computer constantly freezes when surfing the internet, and upon restarting the computer (which can take 10 minutes or longer) a message appears on screen saying ?Error loading C:WINDOWSsystem32j261130.dll. The specified module could not be found?. Some days I need to restart the computer 4 or 5 times due to these freezes. As part of the weekly computer maintenance I run the Disk Defragmenter and Scan Disk, along with Norton Internet Security scans. However, this does not help fix the issue. The computer is running Windows XP.

A search of the internet for the filename ?j261130.dll? did not find any references to this particular file. This makes me concerned that the file could be related to malware (such as spyware or adware) which has been installed on your computer, as malware often generates files with random file names to avoid detection. Additionally, since the problem occurs when using a web browser to surf the internet this indicates that there could potentially be some malware installed with your web browser. Therefore, we will first investigate the possibility that such malware has been installed on your computer. While Norton Internet Security should detect most common forms of malware, no one utility is able to detect all such nasties so it is possible that some piece of malware has been missed. Therefore, I suggest that you download and install Ad-Aware SE Personal (www.lavasoft.de), Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org), and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads) and then scan your computer using these three utilities. Should any malware be found, take the necessary steps to remove the malware from your computer. Once this has completed, you should restart the computer and run the scan again to ensure the malware has been fully removed.

However, should the scans not detect any malware installed on your computer then the next possible reason for the freezes may be add-ons installed within Internet Explorer. Misbehaving add-ons can cause strange behaviour within Internet Explorer and are often responsible for crashes and hangs within the program. To determine whether this is the cause, you can try disabling all Internet Explorer add-ons and check whether the problem continues. Open Internet Explorer and go to the “Tools” menu > ?Manage Add-ons?. In the window that appears, select each add-on which is listed and under “Settings” click “Disable”. Click OK to save and close the settings. Restart Internet Explorer and then use Internet Explorer to browse the internet and check whether the problem persists. If the problem stops, then one of the Internet Explorer add-ons is causing the problem. In this case, it will be a process of elimination to determine the add-on causing the problem. As such, go back into the Manage Add-ons window and enable one of the add-ons, click OK and check whether the problem resurfaces. If not, enable another add-on and check again. Continue this process until the problem reoccurs, at which time you have determined the add-on causing the problem. At this stage, my recommendation would be to leave the add-on disabled, as this will resolve the problem. However, if you require that add-on you may need to research this problem further on the internet to determine whether this is a known problem, and if there are any workarounds or updates which may resolve the issue.

In the event that an add-on is not causing the problem, the next possible cause is a process running in the Windows background. To test this theory, we will need to follow a similar process of elimination to check. As a starting point, close all non-essential programs and background processes. Once you have closed all running applications, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the Windows Task Manager. In the window that appears, click the “Processes” tab and the “User Name” heading to sort the processes by user name (if the User Name heading is not visible, go to the “View” menu > “Select Columns” and tick “User Name”). Close all non-essential processes running under your user name. You should be able to close all processes except ?explorer.exe? (the Windows graphical user interface) and ?taskmgr.exe? (the Windows Task Manager). Once this has occurred, check whether the problem persists. If not, restart the computer and close one of the programs or processes, and check again. If the problem does occur, obviously the most recently closed program or process was not the cause, so restart and try another. This can be quite a cumbersome and tedious process, but it is the most robust way to track down the particular problematic process.

Should closing all programs and processes not fix the problem, then something may have become corrupt in the Windows system. You can try running the Windows System File Checker (SFC) utility, which will scan for any missing or corrupt Windows system files. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type ?sfc /scannow? (without the quotes) and click OK. The Windows System File Checker will launch and commence scanning files. Once the SFC utility has finished it will exit silently with no user feedback. Once this has completed, restart the computer and check whether the problem persists.

As a last resort, should all else fail, you could try using a different internet browser. Mozilla Firefox is an excellent free open-source web browser, which hopefully should not suffer from the same problem as Internet Explorer. Firefox can be downloaded from: www.mozilla.com/firefox . Of course, this solution is more a short-term workaround than a long-term solution, unless you are happy to continue using Firefox into the future as your primary web browser. Therefore, if you wish to fix this problem for good, and you have exhausted all other options, you may need to consider a clean reinstallation of Windows XP. Make sure you backup any data you wish to keep before attempting this procedure, as it will result in all data currently on your computer being lost. If you are not comfortable with reinstalling Windows yourself then you may wish to engage the services of a computer technician, who may be more familiar with such reinstallations.