Vista session manager eat all memory

In the last times my Dell laptop with Vista Enterprise, few minutes after
booting, freeze and the only way to exit from this situation is via HW
switch-off (few seconds on the power button). It does not happen all the
times but about 25% of switch on.
Investigating the problem with Process Explorer I discovered that in those
situations the windows session manager smss.exe (one of the first process in
the list) keep the cpu for about 80% and start "consuming" memory ( I have 2
GB) untill all the memory is gone (in a couple of minutes) and the computer
become unusable. I tryed to kill as many process as possible but noting
changed. The only "correlation" I found is that if I wait for few seconds
before inserting the login password the problem do not arise but I'm not
really sure of that.
Is there anybody who can help me?

Restart your computer, then download and install the
following new updates:

An update is available that improves the compatibility
and reliability of Windows Vista:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194

An update is available that improves the performance
and reliability of Windows Vista:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938979

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Riccardo" wrote:

In the last times my Dell laptop with Vista Enterprise, few minutes after
booting, freeze and the only way to exit from this situation is via HW
switch-off (few seconds on the power button). It does not happen all the
times but about 25% of switch on.
Investigating the problem with Process Explorer I discovered that in those
situations the windows session manager smss.exe (one of the first process in
the list) keep the cpu for about 80% and start "consuming" memory ( I have 2
GB) untill all the memory is gone (in a couple of minutes) and the computer
become unusable. I tryed to kill as many process as possible but noting
changed. The only "correlation" I found is that if I wait for few seconds
before inserting the login password the problem do not arise but I'm not
really sure of that.
Is there anybody who can help me?

Carey Frisch [MVP] wrote:
> Restart your computer, then download and install the
> following new updates:
>
> An update is available that improves the compatibility
> and reliability of Windows Vista:
> http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194
>
> An update is available that improves the performance
> and reliability of Windows Vista:
> http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938979

With all due respect, I've seen zero performance increases on systems
we've installed these patches on (on behalf of customers who requested
updates ot be installed in addition to other work.) And these don't seem
to have anything to do with the OP's problem. I haven't acutlaly this
particular issue (although I've seen many others.)

-saran

Thank you for the suggestions and warning. I've just installed the two
patches and of course I need some statistic in order to realize if the
problem is solved. I'll post here if the boot up problem should arise again.

"Saran" <none@nospam> wrote in message
news:...
> Carey Frisch [MVP] wrote:
>> Restart your computer, then download and install the
>> following new updates:
>>
>> An update is available that improves the compatibility
>> and reliability of Windows Vista:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194
>>
>> An update is available that improves the performance
>> and reliability of Windows Vista:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938979
>
> With all due respect, I've seen zero performance increases on systems
> we've installed these patches on (on behalf of customers who requested
> updates ot be installed in addition to other work.) And these don't seem
> to have anything to do with the OP's problem. I haven't acutlaly this
> particular issue (although I've seen many others.)
>
> -saran
>