computer problem: apps won't open when connected to internet

[BobTheCow]

Alright so here's the short story: yesterday my computer was going CRAZY, my dad ended up reinstalling Windows, and I ran AdAware and Spybot, getting rid of about 100 total bad things. Anyway, the original problem still persists. When I've got the DSL connection open, I just can't open applications like Word. It STARTS to open, but then acts like it freezes. But then if I disconnect from the internet right then and try again, it'll open fine. I've cross-checked it lots of different ways... apps open fine when I'm offline, but not when I'm online. And it's kind of spurratic, occasionally it'll work fine when I'm online. But not often.

Anybody know how or why this could be happening, or what I could do to stop it? It's really annoying, and I wanna make sure nothing else bad is going on with my computer!!!

[Potatoboy]

run a good virus scan.

The best i've found with the most extensive virus database is F-Prot.

https://www.f-prot.com

[BobTheCow]

Well I've got Norton anti-virus and firewall, I guess I can try scanning with that again... any other ideas guys??

[MarkM]

You might well have a few nastys knocking about in your pc but to be honest it is more likely that you are trying to do too much at one time...being online does use a lot of pc resources..ram, processor so to have apps not wanting to open just sounds like you have an info bottle neck, you have kinda fixed it already by saying when you aren't online they will open fine...throw more ram in and close down as much as you can when you are online....turn off the automatic live update for norton as this can slow you down a bit..as long as you remember to do a live update regular you will be fine, and don't have lots of IM programs all launched at the same time as this will throttle back on your processing power as well.

[BobTheCow]

No, Mark, it's not that at all. This just suddenly developed one day, our computer's fine (as far as RAM, I mean), and it happens even when NOTHING else is running. I wish it was as simple as that!!

[MarkM]

ok but thats not what you said in your first post

So find a window and drop it out...won't be fixed but it will be liberating

[Rumble]

ummm this might sound stupid but... did u let it go for a while? maybe word or whatever is checking itself for updates, with is using to much resourses, just a thought

[BobTheCow]

lol true Mark, about both points. *slaps self*

Rumble - I personally haven't, but I *think* my dad said he let it run for a good fifteen minutes, and still nothing happened. Or else it loaded successfully (finally), which means if it keeps taking that long, it's not checking. Haha I can't remember for sure, I'll check with him tongight. Good thinking, thanks!!

[FalconGuy016]

Well, this sucks ryan.

Why doesnt he do an actual reinstall?

[OfficerGoat]

I take it when you "Reinstalled" windows that you just slaped the disk in and ran the installer again.

It sounds like you may have a corupted TCP stack. This happens sometimes. Whats happening is you have an App trying to grab something in the stack and it cant.. so it just sits there trying and eating up your reasorses doing so... when you drop your connection the stack dies and the app gets an actual fail which kills its attempts to get whatever it was after and viola your other apps have resourses to work again.

Do a full blowout on the box... save your docs etc and wipe the drive clean during reinstall by deleting the partitions and reconfigureing them. You will need to reinstall all of your aplications but I think you will find it to be a very worthwhile effort.