somewhat off topic, but i am hoping someone here will have a bright idea.
i have windows XP pro installed on two machines, my home machine and my work machine.
on both machines, windows will now and then totally lock. when this happens the screen stay the same, so no error messages, no blue screen of death, but also no change. the mouse does not work, the keyboard does not work, i cannot even get the caps lock or num lock lights on my keyboard to change. the only thing i have found that works is a hard reset.
my home machine is a fresh install, with no patches or SP's on it yet.
my work machine has every patch and SP going, except for 11 "windows" updates, like media player 9, etc, that shouldn't help fix it.
so, installing patches seems unlikely to fix this problem.
the only real clue i have is that on my home machine this nearly always happens when i am on line (dial up connection, 56k modem). but even then i can go for a couple of weeks or more with no problems at all.
it has happened once already (last night) since my fresh install of windows on my home machine, so i know the bios update i did didn't help.
any helpfully suggestions will be gratefully received.
