The symptoms:
My system of 4 years old is finally acting up. Had zero problems previously. About a week ago it would start to give me a hard freeze/lockup after anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours after the last reboot. No error messages, no warnings, just boom... no response on any buttons pressed or any icons clicked. The mouse would move freely, but I can't do anything with it because nothing responds to the clicking. Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't bring up that window. Absolutely zero response from windows of any kind. My only known recourse is to simply do a hard reboot. The Event Viewer doesn't show any errors related to the time of the lock-up, once I reboot. It's like the lockup is so sudden and thorough that nothing has a chance to be written to the log.
The above happens seemingly no matter what I'm doing. It will do it if I'm browsing. It will do it even if I reboot, and let that fresh boot just sit on the desktop. If I walk away from that reboot and come back in 30 minutes, there's a good chance that it will already be locked up again just from sitting there.
My computer:
XP SP3
Core 2 Duo 6600
ATI x1900xt
2GB RAM
No overlocks of any sort. No new hardware added in the past 12 months or so.
What I've done to try to isolate and/or fix it:
-I used Windows update.
-I installed 2 different adware suites and 2 different anti-virus suites and ran full sweeps (nothing found)
-I opened up my case and reseated all hardware, and blew out any dust in case it was a heat issue
-I uninstalled a bunch of non-essential programs (not a lot there to begin with; I don't like program clutter)
-I ran msconfig and told Windows to boot with only essential services
Ideas? I know it could still be a ton of things, but I'm not sure what step to next take. My XP install CD is 200 miles away so I can't reinstall Windows yet. I don't have spare computer laying around to swap RAM, etc. What things should I try next that I can do within the system? THANK YOU!
My system of 4 years old is finally acting up. Had zero problems previously. About a week ago it would start to give me a hard freeze/lockup after anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours after the last reboot. No error messages, no warnings, just boom... no response on any buttons pressed or any icons clicked. The mouse would move freely, but I can't do anything with it because nothing responds to the clicking. Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't bring up that window. Absolutely zero response from windows of any kind. My only known recourse is to simply do a hard reboot. The Event Viewer doesn't show any errors related to the time of the lock-up, once I reboot. It's like the lockup is so sudden and thorough that nothing has a chance to be written to the log.
The above happens seemingly no matter what I'm doing. It will do it if I'm browsing. It will do it even if I reboot, and let that fresh boot just sit on the desktop. If I walk away from that reboot and come back in 30 minutes, there's a good chance that it will already be locked up again just from sitting there.
My computer:
XP SP3
Core 2 Duo 6600
ATI x1900xt
2GB RAM
No overlocks of any sort. No new hardware added in the past 12 months or so.
What I've done to try to isolate and/or fix it:
-I used Windows update.
-I installed 2 different adware suites and 2 different anti-virus suites and ran full sweeps (nothing found)
-I opened up my case and reseated all hardware, and blew out any dust in case it was a heat issue
-I uninstalled a bunch of non-essential programs (not a lot there to begin with; I don't like program clutter)
-I ran msconfig and told Windows to boot with only essential services
Ideas? I know it could still be a ton of things, but I'm not sure what step to next take. My XP install CD is 200 miles away so I can't reinstall Windows yet. I don't have spare computer laying around to swap RAM, etc. What things should I try next that I can do within the system? THANK YOU!
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