I have a Compaq Presario 2286, Yamaha XG 128 Voice Wavetable Sound; 512 kb pipeline cache; Aureal A3D Interactive 360 degree positional sound; 64 bit PCI Graphics with Direct 3D; 56k modem, recently upgraded to 64 mb ram, 3 gig hard dr.; windows 98. The computer consistantly freezes up. Almost all the time, after being on for about 15 to 20 min. at a time? anyway, i cant even ctrl + alt+ del. I have to shut it down from the back of the PC. the screen freezes, "looks like several programs get scrambled on the screen" and irrevocably freezes. sometimes I get a message saying system is unstable or busy, do i wish to wait or hit ctrl + alt + del, that is the only time it will work. PLease help :) its driving me crazy.

My best suggestion? format and reinstall

Check your memory sticks first! make sure there are properly seated!

1) First, make sure your your power management is off in Windows and in your "bios"(when you restart pc) 2) Of course with Windows, you need to run scandisk and defrag regularly 3) Clear out you temp folders 4) From add/remove icon in control panel remove programs you don`t use anymore. 5) In the contol panel, open the system icon and under the "device manager" tab make sure there are no red or yellow flags indicating conflicting hardwae. 6) Go to the start menu button and up to run. Type in sfc. This is windows system file check. You might be prompted for your recovery disk. Go to the dos prompt and type in scanreg/fix. (Please note, this is the DOS prompt,,not the MSDOS prompt. It is not "C:\Windows>" It is "C:\>", and you must shut down your pc and (usually) hold the control button down while it boots up. This will give a list of five choices. You want the "command prompt only"\ This is windows registry repair and will scan and rebuild your registry. Another alternative is to type in scanreg/restore. Windows stores five registrys you are able to restore your system to, but you must do it at the first sign of trouble. I routinely follow these steps and rarely have any error messages on my windows machine

everyone seems to think it's a software problem - I think hardware is worth looking at. 1. check fan /cooling to cpu - had a 350 with a fan siezed up reporting similar probs. If pc is running in a rom that is hot remove case - may help would like to know how you go Cheers Phil

also....do you have lot of stuff running in the background? from startup? go to msconfig and try unchecking a few NON windows apps! NOT pwrprofile/scanreg/taskmon though! you can always go back and recheck em! :)