XP Pro Freezes randomly

[Greg]

Over the last 2-3 months, my computer freezes for no reason. It can happen
while I am working, or when the machine is unattended. I tried uninstalling
individual programs, which did not help. Using DisKeeper to defrag the MFT
helped for a while, but then the problem recurred. Last weekend I wiped the
hard drive and did a reinstallation of XP from the original disc. I
intentionally did not reinstall the programs that I suspected of causing the
problem. The problem keeps happening. I do not get a blue screen, I just
have a frozen screen, mouse, and keyboard, and I have to reboot to get the
system running, until the next time it freezes. The Microsoft Knowledge Base
does not have a solution. I am thinking it may be a hardware issue at this
point, but I wanted a second opinion. I have a 2 ghz machine with 2 G RAM. I
have not gotten any error messages to explain the problem. Thanks for
helping.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Over the last 2-3 months, my computer freezes for no reason. It can
happen while I am working, or when the machine is unattended. I
tried uninstalling individual programs, which did not help. Using
DisKeeper to defrag the MFT helped for a while, but then the
problem recurred. Last weekend I wiped the hard drive and did a
reinstallation of XP from the original disc. I intentionally did
not reinstall the programs that I suspected of causing the problem.
The problem keeps happening. I do not get a blue screen, I just
have a frozen screen, mouse, and keyboard, and I have to reboot to
get the system running, until the next time it freezes. The
Microsoft Knowledge Base does not have a solution. I am thinking it
may be a hardware issue at this point, but I wanted a second
opinion. I have a 2 ghz machine with 2 G RAM. I have not gotten any
error messages to explain the problem. Thanks for helping.

Check the power going into the machine (change the power
strip/outlet/UPS)...

Clean out the inside (get rid of excess dust - make sure you have plenty of
airflow...)

Check your event log for any issues...

Did you add/change any hardware before it started happening?

Have you downloaded/utilized the disk drive diagnbostics utility from
whatever manufacturer (their web page - support section - downloads) made
your hard disk drive?

Tried swapping the RAM in your machine (changing the order in which they are
seated in the machine?

Opened it up and made sure everything is seated well? Actually removed and
reseated all the cabling, the memory, the CPU, etc?

 

[Gerry]

Greg

Shenan has already made most of the points I would have made!

Event Viewer Error Reports -System and Application logs. A tip for
posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and click on the error
you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a button resembling
two pages. Click the button and close Event Viewer.Now start your
message (email) and do a paste into the body of the message. Make sure
this is the first paste after exiting from Event Viewer.

Overheating would cause freezing. Are all your fans working? Dust
bunnies can also cause over heating.
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Are the mouse and keyboard wireless or wired? If wireless it is easy to
forget you need to replace batteries from time to time.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~