Computer constantly freezing on start up.

[Meatwad]

My computer started freezing on startup, and it had been awhile since I had formated my harddrive, so I went ahead and formatted thinking that would solve the problem. Well, it didn't help and only made things worse. After formatting it started to freeze on startup and on shutdown. I changed to some older drivers for my motherboard and that fixed that freezing on shutdown, but it still freezes on startup.

More specifically, it freezes before it even gets to the loading screen, and I restart. It makes it a little further and freezes again, so I restart. After 3 or 4 restarts it finally loads Windows to the desktop, but the fun doesn't stop there. After a few minutes it will freeze again, and then after restarting it will freeze again at some point without fail. It seems that the longer the computer runs the longer time that it takes to freeze. If it has been running for a few hours and freezes, I restart and it will not freeze on startup.

In summary, my computer freezes a whole lot and it is driving me mad. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this and what I should do to stop it?

The specs on my computer are:
XP2600+
nforce2 mobo
Ti4200
gig of corsair pc3200

It will be two years old this December, and started freezing only recently. The only hardware difference between now and when it was new is a new, better fan I put on the video card because the old one crapped out.

If anyone can help me with this I would greatly appreciate it. If need anymore information just ask and I will answer as soon as possible. Thanks.

 

[Fencer128]

Hi,

I thought heat when I first read your post. Just in case you haven't already, take the side off your case and observe the behaviour of the cpu and northbridge fans as you boot. Do they seem unsteady, slow or freeze?

If that fails try borrowing some RAM to swap out with yours (or try memtest86, etc)

Good luck,

Andy

 

[Meatwad]

Do you think it is heat even though the longer it runs the less frequently it freezes? When I restart it cold after being off overnight, it always freezes up without fail. However, when I restart after it has run awhile it doesn't freeze immediately.

 

[lokiju]

in your bios see if you can do a "safe boot" option or something that will basically make it check the RAM on P.O.S.T. to confirm it is able to correctly read each stick.

I have the same exact issue before with a different board and this ended up being the issue, I did that check as I mentioned and once it said I wasn't able to read a part of it, I just removed one and did again until I determined which stick was the defective one.

 

[Fencer128]

Hi,

I thought heat because old computer fans tend to run better when they've been on for a while. Sometimes old fans start/stop periodically as the oil, ball bearings, etc come to temperature. Only when the lubricant is at a high enough working temp do they run best. Thus, if its been on a while the fan may be performing better as compared to when it's just been turned on cold.

Good luck,

Andy

 

[BScythe]

Also check out the power-supply, as one dies it is less and less reliable and can cause random freezes and lock-ups. If you have a multi-meter you can check the voltages, otherwise see if you can borrow a power-supply from another computer. The same thing happened to an older computer of mine.

Good Luck!