After the computer is on for more than an hour or so, I am unable to log off or restart or shut down.  When trying to do so, I can still move my mouse on the screen, but I can not click any buttons.  After manually restarting the computer, I am able to log on/off all I want, but after a while it stops working again.

Also, every 16 hours or so this appears in the application event log:

[quote]Event Type: Information
Event Source: SceCli
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1704
Description: Security policy in the Group policy objects are applied successfully. [/quote]

Which I believe is causing my computer to come out of APM (Advanced Power Management) mode.  I know how to change the duration of this, but is it normal for it to wake the computer up?

That eventlog message is most probably unrelated.  It is logged each time that group policy settings are refreshed.

It sounds like you've got something that's causing your box to hang if you can't interact with any programs at all.  Try enabling CrashOnCtrlScroll and forcing a crash when the box is hung.  Then, you could examine the crash dump and check for anything that might be blocking execution (possibly something spinning in the current call stack).

If it is just the shell that is unresponsive and the computer is otherwise still responding to input, then the problem is likely something else.  One easy test of this might be to see if the box is still pingable over the network when it gets into this state.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that you suspect that GPO updates are causing your computer to come out of APM (I assume you mean suspend or hibernate, APM describes a now-obsolete power management functionality and doesn't really refer to a specific low power state).  Do you mean to say that your computer is periodically coming out of suspend and then hanging, or something else?

I'm a bit confused by your description of the problem, but I read over it once and it sounds like maybe its a problem with winlogon.exe?

[quote author=Skywing link=topic=16319.msg164832#msg164832 date=1171472135]
That eventlog message is most probably unrelated.  It is logged each time that group policy settings are refreshed.

It sounds like you've got something that's causing your box to hang if you can't interact with any programs at all.  Try enabling CrashOnCtrlScroll and forcing a crash when the box is hung.  Then, you could examine the crash dump and check for anything that might be blocking execution (possibly something spinning in the current call stack).[/quote]

Enabled it, rebooted, then the next time I tried logging off and my system hung, I tried Ctrl+Scroll Lock+Scroll Lock, but it had no effect.  Basically in this state, I can move the mouse around the screen but can not click anything, and I can still use Alt-Tab to browse through the open applications, but I am unable to view any of them.  And like I said, it only happens after the computer has been on for over an hour or so (weird!)

And yeah the other thing was a separate unrelated question, I probably didn't make that clear:

[quote]I'm not sure what you mean when you say that you suspect that GPO updates are causing your computer to come out of APM (I assume you mean suspend or hibernate, APM describes a now-obsolete power management functionality and doesn't really refer to a specific low power state).  Do you mean to say that your computer is periodically coming out of suspend and then hanging, or something else?
[/quote]

I have APM enabled in Power Options, and turn off hard disks after 20 minutes.  Today I was around the house and the computer was after "suspending" for an hour or so, and then the monitor randomly comes on.  I check event log, and SceCli entry is there (same as quoted above) that was added at that moment the computer came on.

Edit: Windows 2000 Professional SP4, btw