Hi, I recently have this problem where my computer just hangs. There is no blue screen or any error messages or the like, and there don't seem to be any processes running. Everything just freezes, and the PC doesn't respond to any keyboard input or mouse movement. This happens at random times and does not seem to be affected by what the PC is running at the time. Before this, I found out that my power supply and hard drive were malfunctioning. I have changed them with parts that I am quite sure are working. What could be the problem here?

you dont say if you have to reboot or if it just carries on as normal if you leave it. My PC had a period of doing this, often it would hang for 2 minutes (many times a day)then carry on as normal. I had win98se at that time and ran an upgrade to XP, not to try to fix this, but just so I could use google earth, but I found that doing this did cure the problem.

Have you checked the RAM ? You could run memtest-see http://www.memtest86.com/download.h... Also, 256 MB of RAM seems a little low for XP.

cliffpage: In my case once it hangs my PC doesn't recover on its own. polynomial: Thanks, I'll check my RAM

try safe mode, tap the F8 key on bootup and then click on safe mode with networking. See if you can get on-line that way without freezing. Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results as it will help others.

polynomial: I've tried the memory test program. It didn't find any errors. And I've been running XP on 256 MB of RAM for a long time without any problems. I'll try safe mode when I get home.

Thanks for your help guys, but the same thing happens in safe mode. What else could be wrong?