random computer freeze

[buckED]

Hey everyone.

I am having a problem with my computer.
It keeps freezing every now and then. These freezes seem to occur randomly and there's no way of telling it is giong to happen.
Sometimes it occurs while playing a game, other times it is while surfing on the internet, while reading a pdf, while doing stuff with blender or while coding in Visual Studio.
As it happens that randomly I came to the conclusion that it must be a hardware thing since it doesn't seem to be linked to what I am doing in any way.
There are however times, when it happens very rarely like once a week or so, whereas today I have definitly had around 5 to 6 of these incidents.

When it happens the monitor freezes. The computer still seems to run since it sounds like always. The sound from the speekers however freezes into a strange and pretty annoying noise before dying altogether. The computer doesn't respond to any input.

Since there are technically skilled people round here I figured I'd just ask away.
Any idea or advice? Maybe the power supply? Hardware incompatibility? A Virus?

Drop me a line ot two in case you feel like being able to help

Cheers,

Ed.

[jjp]

I'd run Prime95, Memtest86 and maybe some 3DMark benchmark to see if that crashes your pc consistently.

[jacmoe]

Are you sure your PU can handle the load?

[buckED]

Are you sure your PU can handle the load?

So you think it's that as well.
I have always wondered about that. Any idea on how I can find out?
Now that I think about it I don't recall having had such crahes directly after having bought the computer. However I bought a new CPU shortly afterwards and popped in a few more gigs of ram. Maybe it's that.

If I was considering getting a new power unit, what would you suggest?

[jacmoe]

http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=46102

[buckED]

Thanks

[reptor]

I had such freezing with my computer years ago. I used Windows XP but it wasn't the one at fault.

The reason was that the power cable connector of the hard disk drive was slightly damaged, and it caused the hard disk drive to switch off randomly. If it got power back again soon (before I turned the computer off in frustration), then normal operation could be continued without rebooting the computer.

Windows XP noticed that there was something wrong with my hard disk drive and it decided to drop the speed mode of the hard disk drive to the slowest possible mode. This was the first symptom actually that I noticed - I was wondering why the computer became so slow, but then the freezes had been so quick that I had not noticed that yet.

But then it started to freeze, just like in your description.

Then I eventually checked the hard disk drive speed modes because I was wondering why the computer became so slow, and found out that indeed, they are not running at full speed mode. Then I read about it and I found out that Windows automatically drops the speed mode if it thinks the hard disk drive is not working properly. I changed the speed mode back to the fastest possible, but soon Windows dropped it back to the slowest mode again as the real problem still was present.

I figured it out when I realized that there is a "click" sound coming from the hard disk drive. I realized that the click has to mean that the power goes off. Then another "click", and the system worked again, so that was when the power switched back on.

This problem was solved by me slightly modifying the power cable connector of the hard disk drive so that it stays in contact. This cured the problem completely.

So check that the components of your computer are properly connected.