windows freezes when working too hard

[Derick Beckwith]

I am posting in this group because I believe a hardware issue may be at the
root of this.

My problem is that WindowsXP will hang very frequently at different times
when doing different tasks. I will lose all mouse and keyboard control and
the screen will just sit there and not update anymore. Most of the time it
freezes when doing some type of hard drive intensive tasks like copying
files, defragging, virus scans, etc. I have upgraded from 196MB RAM to 256
but problem remains the same. Please suggest where I should start looking.
I would like to correct this issue if I can rather than upgrading the whole
system.

Another reason I think it may be hardware related is this problem starting
happening when I still ran Win98.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Heat would be the first thing that I would check. Processors, video
cards, chipsets, memory, and hard drives are the largest source of heat.
Also check the air coming out of the Power Supply and see if it is
hot. It is normal if it is fairly warm, but it should not be hot.

Finally run diagnostic tests on each peice of hardware. For the hard
drive, this diagnostic software can be found on the CD that came with it
or the maker's website. For the memory, I like MemTest86+:
http://www.memtest.org/

Video Card and Processors can be tested with programs like 3DMark03, or
other benchmarking tools.