Hi, purplesazsaz.
Those additional details should help someone here get some ideas of what
might help. I'm a retired accountant, not a techie of any kind, so all I
have to use in this situation is my own experience, which is limited.
(An aside that probably has nothing to do with your problem, but illustrates
that similar symptoms can be caused by quite different problems: Just
yesterday, my computer "crashed", too. The mouse still worked, but not
well, and the keyboard stopped responding and the screen became "frozen".
To make a long story shorter, I soon had my computer case open and was
pulling PCI cards; I couldn't even get the BIOS to respond to the DEL key so
I could change CMOS settings. I dug an old keyboard out of my junk stash
and plugged it in; things worked normally with that. Then I realized that I
hadn't needed to UNplug my main keyboard. It had somehow become unplugged -
and that was the computer's entire problem! As soon as I plugged it in and
reassembled my computer, I could report a happy ending. ;<) I'm not sure
how I would have described my symptoms if I had posted a cry for help here,
but simply "crash" and "freeze" would not have been specific enough for any
willing helper to have guessed at the actual problem.)
Back to your problem: With your computer in a cabinet, airflow to and
around it might be restricted, causing a buildup of heat inside the case,
especially around the CPU. Is this a new arrangement, or has the computer
run happily like this for some time? Are there other items around the
computer and cabinet that might block airflow, especially items added or
changed recently? Dust buildup inside a computer case can often cause
elevated temperatures; how long has it been since the inside of the case has
been vacuumed or otherwise cleaned? Do you have a way to monitor
temperatures of your case and CPU? Are all your fans working; might one
have slowed down or stopped?
The problem might be something other than heat, of course. Loose or broken
cables might cause such symptoms (as one did for me), but their symptoms
often show up immediately, rather than after the computer has been running
for a while. Symptoms of bad RAM, too, usually don't show up the way you
have described. Your description does not sound like a software problem. I
still suspect some kind of head buildup, but the real gurus may have some
better ideas.
Sorry to throw all these questions at you. We don't need answers to all of
them, but these factors might help you (and us) diagnose your problem. If
nobody jumps into this thread in a day or two, you might want to start a New
one. Put the pertinent facts from this thread into a new message with a
clear description of your symptoms and a good Subject line. This newsgroup
(Discussion Group) has over 15,000 messages in the past month or so, about
500 per day, so nobody can read them all. If one of the people who try to
help out here sees that your first post already has a response, the reader
might assume your problem has been dealt with and go on to the next plea for
help; starting a new thread might qualify that as "the next plea". ;^}
RC
