dear experts for some bizarre reason my wifes computer freezes randomly.mainly on stand by but sometimes when just operating the mouse..then i have to switch off and reboot from cold and then it works again for a day or 2 then starts again, even after a repair-install(for replacing the the boot.INI files that where corrupt) it still makes no difference. the HDD was from another system and we formatted and reinstalled xp pro and it was fine for a while. what i do know is the original HDD with 2000pro on it never had that problem...could it be that the maxtor drive is just not having it with this computer or that the cpu temp could be to much(how do you check anyway?)..just a small note,,i have just formatted the old HDD and made an image of the present drive(back up reasons) with casper xp..should i go and use that to see if it could be the HDD(both HDD`s are maxtor 740xl drives..please help ian mc

There are several possibilities. The most likely one in my view (from what you have said) could be your graphics card or its driver. Have you go the latest driver for it? Have you got the latest or most appropriate DirectX drivers installed? I assume that when you installed the OS you also installed all the motherboard resources (chipset drivers etc that came with it - or later updates from the WWW). Do you ever suffer crashes (as opposed to just freezing)? If yes, then it may be your memory. You could try running some diagnostics. For example docmem and memtest are good memory testing tools. You could run 3DMark on your graphics if you have access to it. It unlikely to be the hard drive. Have you any bad sectors? Do you regularly defrag and scandisk? If not I suggest that you do. Trying the other HDD will obviously rule out the HDD. So no harm in trying. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.