My computer use to have win 98se and i upgraded to win me. For a while no problems then it started freezing once a week and was getting worse. System specs are: Intel Celeron 466@ 466 Voodoo 3 2k pci not overclocked Maxtor 8 gig hard drive WD 10 gig hard drive 32x cd-rom 3 1/2 floopy/LS-120 US robotics 56k modem pci 3com Ethernet Card pci Onboard sound ESS Solo-1 NEC 1030 mobo I thought virus and scanned with mcafee (up to date) and found nothing and i decided it was time to reformat my hard drive cause the windows folder was getting kind of big 1gig and i had a bunch of useless programs to clear too. I backed up everything important and reformat and reinstalled ME. However the problem persists and it freezes up on an average 10 mins into windows. No matter what i do it freezes up i may run a bunch of programs or surf the net freezes or i just let it sit after boot and does it. But it doesn't always lock up at 10 mins it some times can run for an hour with out a problem or freeze as soon as windows is done loading. I have checked my IRQS and none are shared. I have checked my ram and is fine, I have two hard drives and thought maybe one is going bad used my second one and fresh install ME on it still freezes. I have now removed my ethernet card and my modem and still freezes. I have disabled everything in msconfig except what windows needs and the startup folder is empty. Nothing running in back ground only Explorer and Systray. I get about 97% to 95% system resources free at boot up. I have striped my computer to the needed hardware components and still freezes like crazy. Could it be my Motherboard (which i hope not) or could it be ME? Need suggests as to what could be causing this. If it is ME i'm thinking about going back to 98SE. PLease post any other ideas that could cause this problem.

very unusual for me tolock up so much. i assume you've downloaded the latest drivers for everything. it could be a mobo going bad, i have one here that keeps locking up for no reason, sometimes it locks when in the bios, no explaination for it. try going back to 98 and see if it still locks up.

this time i agree with guru... but only this time ;-) Regards Miro

If this happens 10 minutes into the computer being on... no matter what you are doing... you may want to check heat also. Make sure the fans are clean and running properly... especially the CPU fan. If you want to test heat as an issue... open the case up... direct a normal house fan directly at the motherboard/cpu. If the freezing problem clears up, you've found your answer.

Hi Exar: Two things come to mind here for me. The first being that the NEC board probably came with onboard AGP video . . . correct? I would wonder if that was properly disabled. Second is the Voodoo3 card and the driver version that you are running. Try the most recent driver available. I can tell you that I ran that card under Me with the original driver and it ran really well. If a new driver doesn't work I would suggest that you remove the Voodoo card and try running the onboard graphics. If it doesn't have onboard then replace the Voodoo card with the original card that came with the PC. If the problem goes away, look to video. If the problem persists, then you need to look at processor and motherboard. Not to over simplify or insult you, but your CPU fan is running right? Anyway . . . random thoughts from TimeRider

thanks for the suggestions. yeah i have the latest drivers for everything and i'm planning on reinstalling win 98se soon to see if it helps. i did check my fans to see if there was a problem but my cpu fan works and it was pretty clean. going to see if its heat problem by opening it up and adding a fan. just wondering is there any type of virus that can infect a bios by any chance or is that even possible?

yes the onboard video has been disabled by a jumper on the mobo before the reinstalling of win ME. so when i reinstalled ME it only detected my Voodoo 3 and the V3 has the latest drivers