Hello, I have a major problem with my pc latley, it just totally freezes in the middle of a program. Like if a have a lot of windows open when surfing the net, Or im using a powerful program like Mixmeister a PC Game. It's only been happening the past few weeks - everything worked fine until then. I Know its not the memory or the harddrive becuase ive tried 2 different hard drives and 2 different sticks of memory too. I think its either my Video card (Old Skool Geoforce 2 MX 400) or My motherboard (cant remember the model) My video card seems really hot latley - could that just totally freeze the PC? Please can anyone help me? Thank you!:)

If it's only begun doing this in the past few weeks, did you make any changes right about that time? Install any new games or software? make any changes in the BIOS? update any drivers? change any hardware?

NOPE None at all! Added software but i formatted the hard drive thinking it was a virus or something but i still got the problem It even froze when i was installing windows 98se again after formatting. Then i checked the harddrives and they were fine! I think the Motherboard maybe either wearing out or the video card is overheating. Another thing is - When it crashes and i re boot right away - It always freezes again as soon as the icons are just about to appear on the desktop. BUT if i leave it for ABOUT 5 MINS AFTER CRASHING ITS USUALLY ok fOR A WHILE. Weird! Could that be becuase its loading the video drivers at that point and the video card is too hot to function correctly? I dunno

What are your system and CPU temperatures? It sounds like a normal overheating issue. I doubt its the vid card as it only really heats up when using the 3D mode of the card. So in theory while booting to windows after the computer has crashed due to vid card overheat the vid car should actually be cooling down. The symptons are more likely caused by CPU or MB overheat. Maybe you have vacuumed the room raising dust to the air. At the same time your computer has been running sucking in the dust in the air. I suggest you open the case and dust it with pressured air. Dust the power, cpu heatsink and the northbridge heatsink atleast. Remove the casefans if any and dust the grills and the fans. I suggest you do the dusting outside. If the dusting won't help... If I recall correctly that geforce has no heatsink whatsoever. Buy a heatsink for the geforce. Allmost anykind of small heatsink will do. Attach it to the chip with AS3 as a small heatsink weights second to none AS3 should be enough to keep the heatsink in place. If the geforce already has a heatsink in it just change the thermalpaste to AS3 and off you go. The sudden apearance of the problem would point to dust building up in the system. Get that bitch back to work! Steam

Thanks a lot, The CPUs Highest Temp ive ever seen it at was about 167/172. The Video Card DOES has a heatsink but no fan - the heatsink gets extremley HOT. The only other thing i can think of is the CPU is draining power from the motherboard or something. Thanks anyway!

how many watts is your power supply? those temps are WAY TO HOT!(CPU) You might want to check out water cooling. My computer has never gone over 45C(113F)and I'd like to keep it that way.

I don't know if your temps are being reported accurately, but that is definitely too hot...75C+...I'd say that's a good place to start looking for your prob. What about case fans? My overclocked XP1800+ idles in the low 30's, & my overclocked Athlon 1.333 idles in the high 30's to low 40's