Computer keeps freezing - hardware problem?

[DyslexicHobo]

My computer keeps freezing up randomly. About 10-30 minutes after I start my computer, whatever program I'm using freezes. If I try to go to task manager, it will come up very slowly then let me close the program. Shortly after the entire computer will lock up and even my mouse pointer will freeze (no response to ctrl+alt+del, alt+f4, etc). This started to happen randomly one day while I was playing a game. I've done a virus scan and tried replacing the RAM. I've also checked my temperatures to make sure they were normal. Is there any error logs I could check or programs I could run to help figure out what's wrong with my computer?

Oh also, another important note is that it DOESN'T freeze in safe mode.

Thanks for any assistance.
-jz

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you have another computer, download and burn an Ubuntu "live" CD/DVD. This is a complete Linux OS, that you can just pop in your DVD drive and boot.

You might want to also download and burn Memtest86+ 4.00 from www.memtest.org.

 

[DyslexicHobo]

It's definitely not my RAM that's an issue. Is there any specific reason you recommend installing a different OS? I'd much rather stay with Windows. I'm pretty sure that this is some sort of hardware issue but I just can't figure out a way to pinpoint what it is. I don't have any spare parts to use to swap out.

How often do CPUs fail? There was a point where I overclocked quite a bit (I'm running stock now)... I hope I didn't mess anything up. Is there any chance that it's my motherboard?

 

[C1]

If Safe Mode works ok then the good news is that its a software problem. Go to the performance monitor & set up a monitoring profile. Include the graphs for Processor, Disk, Memory as your main elements.

Start the machine, turn on the profile & observe the graphs as you are exersizing the machine (include watching a movie from the HDD while also transfering files to/from disk). Try to determine where the bog starts to happen.

 

[mfenn]

It's definitely not my RAM that's an issue. Is there any specific reason you recommend installing a different OS? I'd much rather stay with Windows. I'm pretty sure that this is some sort of hardware issue but I just can't figure out a way to pinpoint what it is. I don't have any spare parts to use to swap out.

How often do CPUs fail? There was a point where I overclocked quite a bit (I'm running stock now)... I hope I didn't mess anything up. Is there any chance that it's my motherboard?

A "live CD" is a way to run Linux without actually installing it to the HDD. Larry is suggesting this as a way to conclusively rule out a software issue. I suggest that you take his advice before spending a bunch of money.

 

[ShawnD1]

Download Prime95. Run the small FFT test. If it can run this for 5 minutes without stopping, manually stop it and run the large FFT test. Run for 5 minutes. Stop. Run the blend test for 5 minutes.

If it completes all of those tests without any screwups, post back and we'll figure this out together. When a system has a major hardware failure, Prime will usually fail in under a minute. My friend's Athlon started blue screening one day and it wouldn't even run small FFT for more than 5 seconds before screwing up.