[damianjmcgrath]

I have a computer which has a Pentium 4, 2.6Ghz processor, 1Gb of DDR RAM, and a 120Gb Hard drive. The computer is one I bought from the website www.omni-data.co.uk which no longer seems to be working. I have used it fine for 3 years and suddenly, it has developed a fault. The fault is that it suddenly freezes. I cannot press control, alt or del to close any program. Pressing the Caps Lock or NumLock buttons don't turn on any lights. The whole thing just freezes without warning, and normally when I am doing more than one thing at once. It does this every single time I turn the computer on, and the amount of time it takes to freeze varies between 30 seconds and 10 minutes, but even if I do nothing, it still freezes eventually. I have run Ad-Aware and Spybot and it found nothing. A virus scan found nothing. I replaced the power supply to a higher wattage one, and the problems remained. I replaced both my 512Mb RAM sticks with 2 new ones, and the problem is still there, and if anything, is getting worse. I reinstalled Windows completely and it didnt freeze during the reinstallation process but when everything was set up again, it froze after a few minutes, despite me attaching no hardware devices except the mouse and keyboard.



I am running out of possible solutions so any advice would be appreciated. I am running Windows XP Home, and applied Service Pack 1, but not 2, because I cannot connect to the internet for long enough to download it, nor can I load it from a CD because it freezes during the installation process.



What do you suggest?

[Advertisements]

Heat....clean the fans and heatsink, including on the videocard.

Blow a small fan across the motherboard....make it better?

Does the problem recur in safemode?

[gerryf]

Heat....clean the fans and heatsink, including on the videocard.

Blow a small fan across the motherboard....make it better?

Does the problem recur in safemode?

[damianjmcgrath]

I am unsure how to clean the heatsink and fan and video card - I'm not that computer literate so am unsure where these are, but my computer isn't that hot - it doesnt feel hot by putting my hand next to the fan at the back, and I have a program which reports the temperature and it reports healthy levels.

I just restarted the PC in Safe Mode and it works perfectly.

I restarted in Normal Mode, and it didn't work - it froze again.

[whickey]

My computer has the same problem, did you find a anwser for the problen you was having with your computer

[UV_Power]

There are a few things that lead me to agree with gerryf. Sounds like something is overheating.

normally when I am doing more than one thing at once

extra processor activity will cause it to heat up

the amount of time it takes to freeze varies between 30 seconds and 10 minutes

Random freezing is also a sign of overheating

I reinstalled Windows completely and it didnt freeze during the reinstallation process but when everything was set up again, it froze after a few minutes

It actually takes a minimal amount of processing power to install an OS. Think about it. It's kinda like just running one program that copies files over to your hard drive. Once you use the OS, it's running about 30 (+ or -) different processes

My best guess is that it's your CPU. Even if it doesn't feel warm in the back, the heatsink may not have a good grip on the processor. One thing you can try safely is to open up the case and just look inside with a flashlight to see if the CPU fan is spinning.

Also, what programs are you using to monitor the temp.? And which temp. are you actually monitoring (i.e. the CPU, video card, ambient case temp, etc...)?

One last thing. You said you used Safe Mode and it worked perfectly. How long did you keep it in Safe Mode before being assured of this?

Edited by UV_Power, 29 July 2005 - 03:46 PM.

[Ackaris]

I'm having the same problem, my computer freezes at apparently random times, but in safe mode it doesn't happen ever. I left my computer on for about 6 hours in safe mode, it didn't happen once

[4dik]

I had similar problem with random freezes on Vista 64bit. I check everything - buy new mainboard, check RAM, get new hardrive, replace graphic card, update BIOS, install Windows 7 and nothing solve my problem. At last, I found the cause of my random freezes....it was AVG Antivirus !!! I replaced it with Avast and everything works fine !