windows xp freeze

[Carol Palichleb]

I have a Gateway laptop that came loaded with Windows XP Home Edition. After
about 1 1/2 years of running fine, it began to randomly freeze. The
manufacturer has been unable to help me. I've done the following:

- clean install of Windows XP
- wrote zeros to the drive and installed Windows XP
- ran diagnostics on hardware components (including a 3 hour system load
test)
- set BIOS to default settings

Nothing seems to get rid of the random freezes that I am experiencing.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Haus]

Hello
It could be heat related.
Are all the fans running?
Is the fan in the bottom, are you setting it on a surface that is covering
the air intake?

 

[Tim]

What kind of Freeze? If the system locks up instantly where the mouse
pointer won't move and the caps lock / num lock keys have no effect then
this is a hardware fault.
If its still under warrentee then send it back and tell them to fix it.
Otherwise you will need to follow through with a hardware fix.
- Tim

 

[Jane Crystal]

Open the case of your computer. Get a flashlight and magnifying glass and
closely examine all the capacitors on your motherboard. If any of them are
bulging or leaking, you need to replace that board immediately!

Certain motherboards were made with bad capacitors. They are time bombs. My
board, MSI MS-6337-LE5 is one of the unlucky ones. I'm right now shopping
for a new mainboard and hope that I get it taken care of before one or more
capacitors fail or explode or major damage results to the processor, memory,
or other components.

If Windows freezes a lot or shuts down unexpectedly for no reason while
you're doing memory intensive or graphic intensive applications, that is one
sign that you may have bad caps. See www.badcaps.net for more info.