Our PC has been running slower than usual of late and I have noticed that in the Windows Task Manager the task ‘System’ is using close to 100% of CPU - even when nothing is open. NB: This is not the ‘System Idle Process’, just ‘. How do I find out what is causing this? We are running Windows 2000. (more…)

I am running Windows 2000 on a Pentium III 733 with 128 MB RAM. For the last two months on random occasions, the machine will suddenly blue screen and put up the following 4 line message. First line: ‘STOP 0×00000000a 0×00000002′. Second line: ‘IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL’ or ‘XMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED’. Third line: ‘Dumping physical memory to disk’. Fourth line: ‘Beginning dump of physical memory’. The last line is followed by a count down from 1 to 99 after which the machine restarts itself and all appears normal until the problem returns. I have not observed any pattern to this problem which happens when using a range of products. Hope you can explain what’s causing this problem and how it can be cured. (more…)