PC Freezing

[Pooky]

Recently my PC has been freezing every once in a while. All that happens is that the screen freezes and I cannot do anything. The only way to resolve it is to turn off the power (hold down power button) and then start it up again.

No clue what it could be.

Where should I start in trying to diagnose?

Thanks

 

[bromster]

RAM, then try someone else's boot drive in your PC to rule out windows corruption. Freezes are often caused by a stupid small program which wasn't made properly.

 

[MrMag]

Sounds like a memory module if you have more than one installed trying removing one.
If no joy reinstall and remove other until you find the faulty one.

 

[Pooky]

I have only one.

 

[MrMag]

I have only one.

So borrow one or buy another certainly do no harm as you computer will run faster with more memory

 

[NomNom]

Run memtest on your RAM to test the RAM.

Download link to make bootable USB flash drive: http://www.memtest.org/download/5.01/memtest86+-5.01.usb.installer.zip

 

[longboy]

Put up a small heater near the PC tower, that should sort out your freezing issues.

 

[AstroTurf]

lol, oddly enough one of our home pc's was doing this.

New PSU and all is well, swollen cap in the old one.

 

[GreyBush]

Had a similar problem, found out that reg cleaner or some similar program had basically corrupted my registry.. luckily I backed up before doing it so after rolling back all was sorted. Took me a week to sort out, eventually took it to a PC shop and they told me the problem.

 

[TehStranger]

Recently my PC has been freezing every once in a while. All that happens is that the screen freezes and I cannot do anything. The only way to resolve it is to turn off the power (hold down power button) and then start it up again.

No clue what it could be.

Where should I start in trying to diagnose?

Thanks

Put the PC in the corner of your room because the corner is always... 90 degrees. :twisted:

 

[ponder]

Boot a linux livecd.
From the boot menu you can select memtest. If this passes then just boot the linux livecd to the desktop and see if you still get freezes to rule out hardware issues.

 

[tRoN]

Put up a small heater near the PC tower, that should sort out your freezing issues.

 

[slvR]

Cover it with a blanket and give it soup.

 

[Rickster]

I had the same issue, my PC was randomly freezing and a few days after that the PSU died and took the mobo out with it, now im not saying it wasnt a surge that caused this it could be a coincidence that this happened.

 

[Pooky]

I ran memtest, it passed the tests, and now it hasn't frozen since I started it up.

I swear sometimes I feel like computers are the ultimate trolls.

 

[mintydroid]

Do a disk defrag to make sure all parts of your files are located on the same spot on the disk.