On Mon, 5 May 2003 23:29:00 +1200  Ian
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Once every so often (I'm talking months here) some unknown
process starts up on my W98SE system.  This is indicated
by the hourglass icon which appears for a few seconds,
then disappears, then returns for a few seconds, then
disappears...and so on, ad infinitum, for hours at a time.
It's not random, but a very predictable and rythmic cycle.
<snip>
I began [shutting down processes] with Msgsrv32,
and that was it - the hourglass activity stopped
immediately.

Only trouble was, so did most other Windows processes,
which necessitated a reboot.  However, after rebooting,
Windows seems to be behaving itself, and the hourglass
activity has stopped.

<snip>
So what I did by 'killing' it may have been simply to
'shoot the messenger', and maybe the real culprit is still
lurking about.
===========================================================

You are correct in one statement, you did "shoot the
messenger" since the Msgsrv32 is the Windows component
that displays error messages!  Often when Windows freezes,
the Msgsrv32 is listed as a process that is bad, when
actually it got caught while trying to be the messenger
delivering the error message from the actual offending
process.

You will probably still need to keep looking for the stray
application that is trying to execute.  Most of the time I
have found that a hung process is looking for a file or
drive on a network that is no longer there.  Look in your
Control Panel for scheduled tasks to see if anything is
loaded there. Aside from that, it could be the
inadvertantly loaded app that Spybot could detect as
trying to report something to the Internet. If the
Internet connection is not there it will keep trying,
tying up your porcessor. You can get spybot free from the
'net to check it out.

Doug

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