Freezing disease

[tiger_tops]

My PC has contracted freezing disease. Ugh, ok it's a long-ish story:

My PC is a retail PC about 2 years old now. I've had probs from the start, including the same freezing problem i'm having now about a year ago - which was fixed by a technician by replacing the side fan which had fallen off. And by me buying a surge protected plug socket adaptor - technician reckoned it may also have been caused by power surges in the electricity supply. After this the machine ran fine for about a year - then a few weeks ago it started randomly freezing while i was on the computer, forcing me to shut it down everytime. I ran every virus scan, etc i could - but it weeded out no viruses or bugs whatsoever. So in the end i reinstalled Windows.

This was yesterday.... and already i'm getting the freezes again. Infact they're even worse now, it mianly freezes on the XP loading screen, or sometime during the load process, it's like Windows can't get fired up and just dies. But it's also freezing randomly during computer use aswell.

So am i right in concluding that it MUST be hardware related? And if so, what component is my best bet to replace? I can't afford to buy all new PC parts. But one thing is sure - i'm never buying a retail PC ever again. It cost me over £1000 and it's turned out to have had a lifespan of less than 2 years... pathetic.

[randomagenda]

Sounds like hardware to me... but it could be anything from your power supply to a stick of ram! So buying any part before you know would just be pot luck...

I would recommend running a memtest (Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool) however be aware that not all memory error's will show up under testing! If you have more than one stick of ram take one out try the other/s in different slots...

It could be heat related next time it restarts go into your bios (usually Del key when booting) and check your processor temperature under the 'hardware monitor' it should be no more than 75- 80

If it is not ram or heat I would test your power supply. If you don't have a testing kit, take your pc down to your LOCAL pc shop and ask them to test it for you!
Good luck and let me know if you’re still having issues!

[unnameduser]

sounds like hardware. Do you ever get a blue error screen? IF so what error codes are shown. Can you get into the O.S. at all? If so have a look at the task manager and see if the memory or CPU is very busy.

this is a difficult item to diagnose - Do you have any spare hard drives or memory modules or power supply you could swap into the machine.

You could try run a chkdsk for the hard drive and a memtest for the RAM - not a bad place to start.