Help with an HP 8755C pc that locks up

[FTLOSM]

I have a 4 yr old HP 8755c pent 3 800 pc here, very little use overall, nothing crazy done to it in it's lifetime, came with windows 98 on restore disc yadda yadda yadda...

Pc runs fine, wife wants it for her work desk in the den however for no reason that we can figure out it locks up at random about every hour or so. Can't seem to figure out what or why but other than the lockup issue its a great little pc and she wants to use it for some work applications at home.

Here are the things I have tried, all with no luck,
Different keyboard, different mouse, new stick of ram, reinstalled windows 98 2x and did all windows updates (even loaded it the second time with no updates to see if it was an update causing the prob) but still locks up every 45 mins to an hour or so.

Can't say exactly what makes it happen, its happened watching a dvd, reading emails, surfing the web, and a few times it locked up without anyone even AT the pc.

Thought maybe a bad power supply or MB but this is a funky ps and I can't find the exact MB to swap one of those out on it...

I know you can buy a pc cheap these days but honestly id like to try and fix this one, is there any software I can download to diagnose what is causing this pc to lock up, or is there a checklist somewhere of things I can look at or try to possibly see if I can figure this out on my own?

Was hoping someone might come in and know of an issue that HP pcs have or something and offer a solution, just hate to toss a decent working pc that cost me a good buck just a few years ago just because of the lockups...

Any help advice or suggestions welcome, just don't exactly know what to do with it, should I take it into a pc repair shop or something - do they have testing equipment to diagnose something like this?

Bill

 

[MichaelZ]

well i work at a computer store and usually when someone comes in with a case of "my computer is locking up" we open it and up see whether the CPU is cooled sufficiently. sounds like an overheating problem to me.

you'd be supprised how dusty the inside of a PC can be. especially when it's more than a few years old. it's disturbing really, you can literally peel the dust off layers at a time and as you would imagine, the CPU heatsink could very well be so clogged that it's overheating. worse yet the fan died and when it locks, that's a sign of an overheating CPU.

i suggest taking it to a comp store and get them to take a look at it. unless of course you're confident enough to open it up yourself and see if the CPU fan is turning and if it's clean from dust.

 

[FTLOSM]

Thanks for the info and yeah I have built a few pcs so opening it up is no biggie, and I didn't mention but have totally cleaned it out and confirmed the internal fans were working as well as the cpu fan, it wasn't SUPER dirty inside yet seeing that it locks up after an hour or so my first thought was heat releated so the fans were cleaned, checked, and dust dirt all blown out etc etc...

I wrote to HP explaining the problems and such (even that I had replaced ram too) and their response was the main reason they see pcs locking up is build up of memory leakage from opening and closing certain programs and they offered that as a first step to look at, (open programs watch system resources, reopen, watch numbers, close, reopen other things etc etc, then go back to nothing open and if overtime things are showing as the pc is slowing down then to try and pinpoint what programs are creating the leakage of memory over the hour or so).

Might give that a try, heck who knows really,,, but worth tryin I guess - but inside is clean and fans are going, might up the cpu fan or adding a small side blower fan to the side of the heatsink area (got a few spare mini fans around) maybe its just not kickin as much as it needs to or somethin but I did also add a vent fan blowing out of the back so that should help inside heat buildup too.

Bill