After 10 minutes after connecting to the internet, my computer freezes. I don't know why. I have to shut it off the surge protector and wait 10 mins to turn it back on. I tried opening Norton but i get Nmain error. I tried to download AdWare but it will freeze before its done. What can it be?

Julio, I had the same problem, the solution was-1)Upgrade memory (Ram) from 96MB to 256MB(the max for my computer), cost less than $100.00 at crucial.com. 2)Left dial-up for DSL. In the past, I would play solitaire for 15-30 minutes, before I connected to the internet. Joe

Have you ever cleaned the inside of the case of your system? Sounds like a heat problem to me. Get a can of "air" from a discount or office supply store, take the cover off your case (pc turned off) and blow the dust out. Hold the fan on the cpu still with a wooden or paper stick and blow the dust out of the fins of the heat sink. Do this for the power supply and the holes where the air is pulled through to the power supply also blow out any other dust collectors in there. Ground yourself by touching bare metal just inside the case DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE! Hold the can as upright as possible to avoid liquid coming out, not good for electronics. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, take it to a technician, shouldn't cost much, but it probably will. Capacitors hold a dangerous charge of electricity even with the pc turned off and unplugged. Memory chips can be ruined by static electricity. I don't think you should unplug the pc, the ground wire should be plugged in (I think), that's how I do it anyway. You may want to wait for more advice as to whether or not the pc should be unplugged or not, I clean it with it plugged in and shut down every couple of months.

No, there is more to it than that. There is no reason why your computer should act like that. Why do you have to wait 10 minutes before turning it back on? I am presuming your running ME. Start computer in SAFE MODE and see if it freezes after 10 minutes. You probably need to do a clean and sort. Download Spybot and get rid of all the programs that are causing your machine to freeze. How many programs are you running at start up. The only things that should be at right bottom of your screen are your anti-virus progam and your firewall if you run one. If you have more than those two items, your using up too much of your systems resources and if you have little memory in your machine, windows starts using virtual memory which is prone to freeze your machine. There are many things that probably need to be done, but you being there and I being here, very difficult to know what is going on there.

Of course there may be more to it than a heat issue, but if this person doesn't clean the heat sink or possibly never has and this behavior recently started, I think it is the most likely immediate cause of problems. Limiting startups, getting rid of spyware and adding memory would also help, I feel sure, but if every ten minutes the machine locks up and it takes ten minutes to (cool off enough to) boot, it just makes sense heat build-up would be the most likely culprit, imo.

Sounds like a background program, possibly Office findfast doing some sorting after 10 minutes. Go through the tips on the homepage link on this response and it should sort it.