This problem has been occurring intermittently on my computer for about a week. Whether or not its doing some CPU intense activities such as gaming or some low level work such as browsing the web or using notepad, aim, etc. it freezes up. I hate having to force reboot my computer every time this happens? What could possibly be the problem? Hardware/software?? PS- When I mean freezes, my cursor stops moving and everything is "paused." Analogous to crashing? Thanks in advance.

battleidiot, memory springs to mind almost immediately. Apparently, there's no such thing as 'too much' memory and a shortage results in a 'freeze' till your machine clears it's head. Sometimes a memory manager helps, but the built in one in XP seems pretty good. How much memory do you have? Can you add more? Just a guess, but... HTH. Ed in Texas.

Overheating and your power supply also come to mind. To help you, however, you need to post more information. 2/1 doesn't say what the cpu and RAM are. Post the specs on your psu also.

Looks like this is a laptop. http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/del...

I'm curious if the cpu cooling fan is running? You probably have a build up of dust causing the cpu to overheat. If your a do-it-yourself person, http://repair4laptop.org/disassembl... should give you enough info to clean the heatsink.

thanks alot for your quick and very helpful tips i just got a blue error screen saying something about my phycical memory phycical memory dump not to sure what that means also my fan seems to be running so i dont think thats the problem of overheating beacuse sometimes even when i just start my computer up and just surf the web for 20 minutes or so it frezes up and i can't do anything my specs Dell inspiron intel Core 2 CPU T4600 @ 1.83GHz 988 MHz , 2.00 GB of RAM Service pack 2 Media center edition Microsoft XP additional information http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/del...

what other remedy would someone suggest if pc is overheating and a quick and thorough dusting doesnt seem to help?