Help! Puter keeps freezing!

My computer has been freezing up lately. Usually, the mouse cursor
continues to move for a minute, but can't actually select or launch
anything. Then the mouse freezes. Then I have to reset. It's
particularly likely to happen while installing new software from CD.

Symptoms seemed to get worse after I installed a new Sony SATA DVD
drive. Unplugging the DVD drive didn't seem to have much impact, however.

I tried a new hard drive (Seagate 500Gb SATA). No change. I always
install my OS from scratch, not duplicating the old drive.

System config: Machspeed motherboard/AMD 3.11GHz CPU. They came bundled
together with CPU fan, so I figured they'd be well-matched. 2Gigs memory
on one 240 pin chip. Kensington, I think. Obsolete Diamond AGP video
card. Maybe it's time for a new card, but I hate replacing things that
still work.

Windows XP installed from SP1 disk, upgraded to SP2 then SP3.

Let me know what you think.. Thanks!

slip

On 11/24/2011 12:45 PM, GuppyPilot wrote:
My computer has been freezing up lately. Usually, the mouse cursor
continues to move for a minute, but can't actually select or launch
anything. Then the mouse freezes. Then I have to reset. It's
particularly likely to happen while installing new software from CD.

Symptoms seemed to get worse after I installed a new Sony SATA DVD
drive. Unplugging the DVD drive didn't seem to have much impact, however.

I tried a new hard drive (Seagate 500Gb SATA). No change. I always
install my OS from scratch, not duplicating the old drive.

System config: Machspeed motherboard/AMD 3.11GHz CPU. They came bundled
together with CPU fan, so I figured they'd be well-matched. 2Gigs memory
on one 240 pin chip. Kensington, I think. Obsolete Diamond AGP video
card. Maybe it's time for a new card, but I hate replacing things that
still work.

Windows XP installed from SP1 disk, upgraded to SP2 then SP3.

Let me know what you think.. Thanks!

slip

It could be zillions of things right now. You need to find out if it is
hardware or software first. Yes installing a fresh install of Windows
helps, but it isn't conclusive.

Got a Ubuntu Live CD? Run that long enough to see if the computer still
acts up. I would remove the Windows drive personally. As there is like a
0.01% chance that Ubuntu might damage the Windows install. Yes I have
had that happen before.

If Ubuntu has problems too, then it is pretty clear that it is a
hardware problem. Ubuntu CD also has memtest86 as a boot option and run
that to check out the memory.

Let's know what happened up to this point. As there are lots of
directions we can go yet. Too much to add in this post.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v3.0
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3