On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 09:30:59 +0000, Mervyn Thomas wrote:

I am getting, several times a week, situations when the PC totally
freezes with no input via the mouse or keyboard but with the screen just
as it was before the freeze. Powering down fixes it. Can anyone advise
how to go about identifying and fixing the problem?

It could caused by a runaway process. Such an errant process hogs the
CPU preventing it from updating the system, keyboard, mouse, etc. in a
timely manner, and thus gives the appearance that the computer is frozen
or locked up.

What applications are you running and what are doing when the "freeze"
happens? Does the freeze occur under the same circumstances? What other
tasks are running in the background?

Try running the Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del to access it). Place it on
the desktop so that it is visible at all times. When the freeze occurs,
check it to see if any process or task is using 100% of the CPU's time.
Give it time to update. If the cause is a runaway process, it may take
several seconds to minutes to update.

Stef