How to troubleshoot a computer that freezes often?

Question

I'm running Windows XP on a custom built machine.

It hasn't had these sort of problems in the past. It's not even a normal kind of freeze. Things will stop working and the screen stays the same, but the cursor can still move. I can open task manager and then everything stops working (or even opening the start menu has the same effect).

What should I be looking for?

Answer 1

Most likely it has then gathered a lot of dust inside and needs some cleaning. Or maybe some fan is about to die.

Answer 2

Is there anything running that's using CPU? Is the HDD light on when the freeze happens? It could be that you have a bad HDD. I had this problem with a laptop - writes would freeze the whole machine for seconds at a time.

There are a number of packages available for monitoring SMART HDD params - check to see if the HDD is reporting any problems.

Answer 3

Usually I will just reformat my PC for this type of problem.

Answer 4

I think you should first check the condensers on the motherboard, and clean out all the dust in the system case if there is any.

Install videocard, motherboard, and hard drive utilities to monitor their temperature or use SpeedFan

Then get Ubuntu liveCD, boot it and check RAM from the boot menu( a few times if you have the time).

If everything is ok, boot Ubuntu and check HDD S.M.A.R.T. with the Disk Utility in System - Administration - Disk Utility. Run long S.M.A.R.T. tests.

Check if computer freezes in Ubuntu, while you use Firefox for example.