A few other additional info: VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT AUDIO: Creative SB LIVE! Hard Drive: 40 GB _____________________ Greetings! I've ran into a problem with my PC and I've asked for local help, with no resolve. I started having mysterious freezes, where the computer would lock. (Lock as in the mouse wouldn't even move, the keyboard wouldn’t respond and the only remedy was a hard reboot.) Locks would sometimes produce strange sounds through the speakers. The freezes started randomly, few and far between, then got closer and more frequent. I had the most recent drivers, no warning icons in the Device Manager, a clean and health registry and optimum configurations. Despite all this, freezing became so severe, the desktop wouldn't even load. These locking spells were truly quite random - the only tell-all was a guaranteed freeze (towards the end) if I used the USB ports. I decided to format the PC, and it froze upon a new XP Installation. Different formats and installation attempts produced different freezes in different stages of the installations. CHKDSK in XP Recovery Console says there are bad sectors with each scan - unless CHKDSK is ran immediately after a format. HDD Regenerator said the Hard Drive is fine. I even temporarily swapped the hard drive with another computer and still had the same freezing problems. Memtest86+ did multiple tests and said my memory is fine. I’ve checked to make sure everything was connected inside the PC (which always has minimal dust inside). Everything was ok. I had a friend mention the motherboard and perhaps the processor, but I wouldn’t know how to check those. An additional quirk, the Dell BIOS load screen is missing. I just have a blinking “_” cursor, then a Windows load - it has been this way for a while. The XP Boot CD froze a few times scanning the systems hardware, even before installation. Could someone please help me identify the problem based on the information I’ve given? I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

You said you used Memtest to test the RAM. How long did you run it for? Hopefully you ran it for several hours. When I run it I run it for atleast 13 hours. If CHKDSK reports bad sectors on the HD, it probably has them. The CMOS battery may need to be changed. Check the motherboard for bulging/leaking caps: http://www.badcaps.net/images/caps/... WinSimple Software CompTIA A+ Certified

Thanks for the quick reply and the helpful photo. Memtest ran for several hours, but not 13. Probably more like 2 or 3.... I thought it was extremely strange that CHKDSK found no errors after a format, but found bad sectors with even a partial (XP) installation. I don't think I've even heard of a CMOS battery before. >_< I researched it a little bit. I haven't had any time setting problems. Even when the computer would freeze for the umpteenth time, if it made it to the desktop, it had the right date and time. The motherboard caps were not like the ones shown in the picture. All of them were pretty flat. Would a corrupt BIOS cause any of the problems I've been seeing?

A year ago I had an inkling that one of my RAM sticks were bad. So I ran Memtest on it. It ran fine for over 18 hours and then Memtest froze. After that it wouldn't even post. I removed one of the RAM sticks and all was well. The filesystem keeps a log of bad sectors on the hard drive and avoids them. When the hard drive is formatted, this log is erased. Perhaps the test you did on the hard drive wasn't very thorough and just checked for a log of bad sectors and didn't test the sectors themselves. A test this thorough would have taken several minutes. "Even when the computer would freeze for the umpteenth time, if it made it to the desktop, it had the right date and time." The battery isn't used when the system is plugged in. The battery is only engaged when the system in unplugged completely. The caps that you saw; do they look like the same type as the ones in the picture I linked to? WinSimple Software CompTIA A+ Certified

EUREKA! Problem solved! I took your advice as far as removing one of the memory sticks, and now the PC is working great and hasn't frozen since! There was another RAM stick I could use (from a similar computer) and with it added, its working great. Its also good to know that the problem isn't in on the computer itself, but I had a bad ram.... Physical inspection of the RAM looked ok, but that doesn't mean anything. I think there's a good lesson in all this. Even with a scan, don't rule out the RAM! Thanks for your advice! You helped save this PC!

That's what I like to hear. Yeah 2 or 3 hours of running Memtest usually isn't good enough. I'm glad you got it fixed! WinSimple Software CompTIA A+ Certified

Looks like it wasn't the stick. I tried putting my perfectly fine (judging from how well it works on my other computer) 512 MB stick in the 2nd slot in this particular PC and the machine froze like mad again. Putting the 128MB stick in the 2nd slot, it works perfectly... again. Interesting.... What do you think this is all about? I'm definitely not going to complain with 640MB ram. Even with that, this machine flies...