I have a Gateway home computer, and everything on it is plugged into a surge protector. Last week, we had some really severe lightning storms. I was using Quicken, and the power went out. The computer turned off and then on, and since that time, I have been having problems with it. It has no trouble booting if it's been less than 3 hours since I last used it, but when I let it sit overnight, and go to turn it on in the morning, it will get to the black screen with the Windows XP logo, and it will freeze, then restart. IT did this 8 times today!!! When it finally boots, it will freeze up at random times, and I can't press Ctrl+Alt+Del, because that does nothing. I ran the HArd disk test that comes with XP (right click on drive, go to tools menu), and it reported no errors. I decided to try to repair Win XP via the option on the CD ROM, an it froze with 25 mins. left. I then repartitioned/reformatted the drive, and reinstalled the OS. It worked, but after using the computer for like 5 minutes, XP Froze again!!!! Any ideas?????

This one's going to be difficult to nail down. It could be any of Powersupply, Motherboard, CPU, Graphics, ram. Could even be the surgeprotector. If it got a jolt during the storms, I'd replace it. It,s done its job. Could still be the harddrive. When you formatted it did you run a surface scan? Maybe that will show something. Use a 98 bootflopy and run scandisk from there. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life.

Go to system in control panel and click on advanced, under startup and recovery place a check in send a administrative alert. I believe that will give you a blue scren error number when it fails and you should be able to get more information with that stop number. May it be said when I die, He was a man of integrity.

I have dealt with computers acting like you say and like richard says they are HARD to nail down! May it be said when I die, He was a man of integrity.

I too have repaired computers acting like yours. Usually it's the ram, I'd test the ram with Memtest86 and see if it's ok. It could also be the hard drive; test it with your hard drive manufacturers diagnostic utility (it can be downloaded from their website). But you can't really trust it, I had a hard drive that was acting up and I tested it, it said it was fine and a day later the damn thing died! And definitely do what Doc said, seeing a blue screen with the error will really help narrow this thing down. Symbios

You need a new power supply

Could be but also could not be, I have seen that kinda problem and replace memory and powersupplys and still not fix. May it be said when I die, He was a man of integrity.