Date: 01/19/08 (Computer Help)    Keywords: software

Okay, I hope someone on here can help me! I'm completely lost. The sad story here is that my husband cheated on me and we're getting a divorce, and he was the person that always helped me with my computer problems... haha. So I'm relying on the kindness of people on the internet now...

Problem: My computer freezes at random. When I say freeze I mean a total lock-up. It's extremely sudden, the mouse won't move, the harddrive appears to be doing nothing, EVERYTHING is totally frozen. The only solution is to press the reboot or power button on my tower. If I use the reboot button it just locks up during boot-up so I have to shut it down completely and wait a few minutes.

When it happens: During boot-up, right after, sometimes in the middle of nowhere after hours of being on, sometimes DAYS after. I had a theory that it was only during or around booting up so I left it on for days and for 2 it was fine... today I got home and it was frozen. There are no patterns that I can see in when or why it happens. There are no specific programs that seem to cause it as sometimes it freezes during boot up.

When this started: It originally started when I got a substantially better video card. I'm not sure what kind it was because my soon-to-be-ex returned it and put an older but still better-than-what-I-had video card in mine. The current card is an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (256 MB). Originally the problem WAS worse with the previous card, but it IS still happening.

Theories: Power source isn't strong enough? But if it's that, why isn't it more consistent? Or the power source is just dying?

Here are the stats I could get off my computer to share... I'm not a total n00b, I swear. I do know my way around a computer quite well. Hardware is just something that's new to me.

Suggestions would be awesome. I could buy a new power source and install it if that's the issue, but I don't want to if that's not going to fix it... I don't have the money to waste on that, it would have to come out of grocery money and stuff, haha... but my computer is important to me. XP

Windows XP Pro version 2002 Service pack 3, v3180
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.40GHz
2.41 GHz, 786 MB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 256 MB
Direct X 9.0

I also have a dvd burner, two harddrives, and a rather large fan on my current motherboard. I don't know if those would be draining a lot of power or anything.

I also just reformatted and put windows back on this machine about... a month - two months ago. So I'm not sure it would be something software based... but if there is anything that I should try, please let me know!

Any help is really appreciated!!!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computer_help/857339.html