Help. Why does my computer freeze?

[IronFist]

Randomly, my computer likes to freeze. It's NOT the blue screen of death, it just freezes. Winamp stops, and everything that is going on freezes, so like the mouse stops moving, I can't type anymore, etc. It's like someone pushed "pause" on my computer. I have to reboot, and it ****es me off more than anything.

This has been happening for a while, but there's no order to it. No certain program causes it to happen. Sometimes it will happen once a week, other times it will happen multiple times per day (like today, hence why I'm so ****ed off right now).

I've got WinME, which may be the problem, however it didn't start freezing for a few months after I got my computer (2 years ago). It seems to be happening more often as time goes on. It's an HP Pavilion 8755C if that helps. I suspected aol may be the problem, but that doesn't seem to be it.

It seems to happen a lot when I'm typing something, like this post, or an IM, for example. I mean, sometimes it freezes when I'm scrolling through a page, but I think most of the time it's while I'm typing (it could just be that I'm typing most of the time anyway...) but once I even came home from class and found my computer frozen on the screen saver. Wtf is up with that?!

So, if anyone can help, please please please help me out so I don't have to kick my computer's ass.

IronFist

[TkdWarrior]

i dunno much about freezing thing but it happens with mostly win98 or win ME .... may be it's registry got too overloaded...
i hav switched to win 2000 pro and it's working fine since then...
well for registry cleaning u can try LavaSoft Ad-Aware u can find it in download.com
-TkdWarrior-

[IronFist]

Yeah, Ad-aware is cool. The first time I used it it found 100 pieces of spyware, but now I'm down to 0. It must be something else.

What part of India are you from?

IronFist

[Azure]

I had this problem myself. I have an athlon and discovered that it was overheating. What you can try is taking the side of your case off and see if it keeps happening. I generally find it overheats when doing graphics intensive work eg gaming, however it does happen randomlly sometimes. My PC is so bad I have the side of the case off perminatly and a fan blowing in on it, an aluminium case would prolly fix the problem but there a little pricey.

Anyway hope this helps, its the only reasonable explination I can think of, Plus i've seen it happen in my PC and a friends.

Good Luck.

Azure.

[TkdWarrior]

over heating(u can check the fan if its workin or not) cause too but i suspect cause i hav seen comp freezing even just booting... anyways win2000 proffessional is way better than any other Windows...
or use Linux Mandrake/Redhat but they r pain to use if u r not expereinced user...

IronFist i m in Delhi
-TkdWarrior-

[guohuen]

Empty your cache periodically.

[GinSueDog]

What are the specs of your PC? How much memory, HD space and so on do you have. It can be a wide range of things causing your problem. Here are a few suggestions.

First, make sure you are not mixing different memory types together. PC100 and PC133 are not suppose to be mixed together as it can cause timing issues. The memory should be labelled in some way by the maker.

Second, try upgrading your IE to 6.0 SP1, or if you already have it then run a repair install of IE. You can run a repair install from add/remove programs.

Third, as some else mentioned, empty your cache and make sure your virtual memory is setup correctly. You can configure your VM in the system properties.

Fourth, check your drivers. Try uninstalling and then reinstalling your sound and video drivers. If you are using an Intel chipset, make sure you have the Intel Application Accelerator loaded.

Finally, try to remove everything out of your startup. I believe you can do this in MSCONFIG from the run line in ME. I am not sure since I have rarely used ME.

If all else fails, reinstall your OS, if this problem still occurs after a clean install then you may have a bigger issue.-ED

[Ironpig]

Check to see if you have all the proper updated drivers for your hardware first.

Check to see if you have any hardware conflicts second. Make sure you dont have two hardware devices sharing an IRQ.

Get ad aware because it is great to get rid of spy ware on your computer.

Get pop up stopper so you dont have issues with spam pops on pages.

Scandisk and defrag at least once a week, whether you need it or not.

Shake human bones over your PC and shout "demons begone!"

in that order.

*smile*

[IronFist]

I hate popups. What's the best popup stopper?

IronFist

[SanSoo Student]

First upgrade to winxp pro, the best OS out rite now. Win2000 is for more buisness and network related people. Getting more ram wouldn't hurt also. As for pop up killing, go to ie->tools->internet options->security-> custom level->scripting (disable javascripting).
See no need for a useless pop up killer!

[Shadow Dragon]

A lot of Soft, especially MS-Office causes a LOT of Memory leaks and they can end up hanging your PC.
Getting more Memory is simply a quick fix, but not a cure.
Thus starting and stopping the same Soft will cause your Memory to run out.

Got for Windows 2000, it is the most reliable Windows OS out there.

XP sucks BIG time as does ME, 98 is still ok as is NT 4.0, listen to the guys that use this OS on a professional level.

My first advise is to use as little of Microsoft Soft as possible, i.e. NO I.E., no Microsoft Explorer, etc.

Cheers.

[Ironpig]

Panicware has a great program I use called pop up stopper.

Check it out.

[IronFist]

Panicware has a great program I use called pop up stopper.

Oi, that be US$20!

(disable javascripting).

Hmmm, I don't think I wanna do that.

Anyway, let me check all my settings so many I can answer some of those technical questions.

It's funny cuz I'm an IS major... I'm good at doing stuff with computers I just don't know how they work very well :confused: :confused: :D

IronFist

[joedoe]

Try Pop Up Cop.

To stop your computer freezing - take it out of the freezer :D

Sorry, the voices made me do it :D

[FatherDog]

If you install Mozilla or Opera, both of them have an option you can set to disable windows from being able to spawn new windows.

That'll let you keep Javascript on but effectively kill popup ads.

[JAZA]

I have a pavilion with winME too.
Two problems:
How much RAM do you have? If you have a lot progrmas running you need 256 MB or ideally 512 MB.
Other problem is the swap of the disk, if have a lot of applications WInME doesn't free all the swap memory and the computer crash.
One tip use the monitor of resources and look for the level of memory you are usng, and then kill one by one the apllications, so yuo can see which is more demanding.