my lap top has a couple of buttons that stopped working and one of them is the delete button. So whenever my screen freezes I cant go to the WINDOWS TASK MANAGER by pressing ctrl alt del anymore. I hav to wait a very long time or restart my computer. Can someone please help me by directing me how to get to the task manager from scratch. I have a compaq armada m300 with windows 2000 professional. I know i know. its a really old lap top indead. Thank you very much. Maybe if we can determine why the machine is freezing, we'll be BETTER able to diagnose the problem......when does the PC freeze...at startup?......after a certain amount of time?........have you cleaned it?....... have you kept it malware free?

Edit: I should have answered the questions asked.....Run "taskmgr.exe" from the COMMAND line.

http://www.howtocleanstuff.net/things/electronics/how-to-clean-a-laptop-keyboard/

You could always use the windows key and just monkey it from there.

The reason I'm not going into much depth is that I agree with Karnac, if we can solve the problem first then that's better.sorry bout that. It does it usually after Ive been on the computer for a couple of hours. Then out of no were the screen freezes or I just cant give any page any comand. the curser moves and all but when I press on the X button up top to close the window it wont register my action.
This problem began when I put a 4 usb port into the laptop. That way I could use my mouse, internet connection (my ethernet slot in my laptop does not work anymore. So must use additional hardware to get on internet) and sometimes a 2gig zip DRIVE. Now that Ive removed the 4 usb port from my laptop it seems to work a lot faster and takes longer before it freezes. but still freezez.
Note: I have about a few buttons up top that dont work. the addition with equal sign, delete button, and the other sign that looks just like this but backwords /. by the way thanks for helping out guys. I appreciate it.Okay, did you do what karnac suggested?

Let's use that as a starting point.So I cleaned up my laptop decently. Took forever but I did it. The problem seems to persist. The keys do not SEEM to work still.
I also found another problem that I might have to post on a diffrent forum. When i power on my laptop it goes through the whole booting process then the enter your password. My desktop with all the icon appears and I hear the melody it normally plays. Then about 10 second later I get 2 error messages that say could not find program or file RUNDLL C:/program blah blah blah. Something like that. Give it a minute and suddently my computer shuts off on its own and restarts itself all over again. lol i go through this process no joking at least 7 - 10 times. Just to get my computer to operate properly. But oh well. Ive learned to work with it I guess by keeping my computer on for weeks at a time.
I would really appreciate it if you can help me with the first problem first though. Thanks. Have you tried an external keyboard and mouse?CTRL - SHIFT - ESC AWSOME, the external keyboard worked. thanks.No problem, it's not as portable, but it sure saves money.