Freezing OS

hello it folks

I am a new member of this forum. I am not much of an IT expert, so this may seem trivial to some of you. I am having problems with my OS that keeps freezing. what could be the source of this problem.

M

can you give us a few more detaisl about you problem ? Please include the version of the OS that you are using. And a description of the problem ? and its frequency of occurence.. and any prior actions before the occurence oft he problem. Please state the history of the problem if you can ? has it been happening often ? for how long etc..

Basically the more we know.. the more we can help.. just describe everything.. the more you type the better

Thank you for your prompt reply.

The machine is a tishiba with intel pentium and the OS is a windows XP professional.

Well, everything boots up fine and it works for maximum 30 minutes then just freezes. I use very simple applications such as word, excel, powerpoint and the internet. This started about a week ago. I tried changing the RAM from 128 to 256 and this did not make a difference [not sure if it should!]

anything else I can check?

MM

hard to say really from what you told me.. lets take a quick peek under the hood shall we.. the next time you boot up, once your logged into windows and before you start any work, i would suggest you hit cntrl-alt-del and click on "task manager". Then minimise it so that it shows in your system tray near the clock as a small column graph. This will display your CPU usage as and when you work.. then the next time your comp freezes, take a peak at the graph and see if the green part is maxed out.

If this is indeed the case.. then hop over to this link ---> http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/files/hijackthis.php and download the freely available tool called "hijackthis".

Follow the instructions there on installing and running hijackthis to produce a report file, and attach the log file in your next post. that will give some indication of whats running on your system (under the hood )

Also if this is laptop, you may want to take a look at heat issues. Make sure its not overheating in anyway.

this also can be hardware problem: for example problem with the graphics card.

Or something as simple as a fan. If a fan isn't working, it gets hot
in there and PC's tend to lock up when that happens.

It could even be blocked airflow. If its a laptop, try raising it off the
desk by putting something under each corner.