Computer Freezes and its not a lack of memory issue?

Question

I am pretty tech savy. Enough to know the basics at least. I have had a Dell XPS 400 now for 5 years. I have never really had any problems with it.

(I KNOW i have enough memory to run the tasks, everything runs completely smooth till the lock up)
Just recently though it has had some problems. Due to the fact that i dont download many things and my software hardly ever changes and i have done nothing differnt to my computer for the last 3 years, my first thoughts are hardware failure. What happens is the computer boots up normal. But as i do whatever it is that im doing(something different almost every time) Sometimes in 2 mins sometimes 2 hours, it randomly freezes. Before it freezes i notice the the music or whatever noise is occurring starts to loop. Whatever screen im at i can always ctrl+alt delete and it instantly goes to the menu. But from there i am stuck. I swapped out the memory in the computer, Ran a vispy scan in safe mode and out of and did a system restore and a registry clean. I turned off all of the start up programs as well and the problem still persists. I am fully updated in every aspect. What im starting to think is that it is a hardrive malfunction or the motherboard. Another thing i realized is it might be something with the sound card. Im unsure if that can cause the problems i have been experiencing. I only think that due to the music loop. Any help?

System Specs
Dell XPS 400 2005model
XP media center sp3
3gigs Ram 80gb hardrive

Answer 1

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Answer 2

Oftentimes when a computer freezes like this, it is heat related. Some things to check:



Do you have adequate ventilation around the vents of the computer?



Are all the fans in the computer working?



Is there a large amount of dust built up inside the computer?



Another possibility is that something has come loose. It could be the heat sink, or fan on the processor. It could be a PCI or other internal device, as well as the memory. You said you had replaced the memory, but it's very important that it is seated just right in the slot. These are some other things to check for.

Answer 3

No, I dont think its related to your soundcard. When your computer freezes especially when music is playing it will cause the music to loop every time. When is the last time you did a defragment of the hard drive? What other programs are running when this occurs? Is the virus scan running when this happens? How much of your hard drive is being used?

Answer 4

Well if u can boot into safe mode and it runs fine that would suggest a driver error, however, your problem sounds similar to one i had a while ago.



I found that mine was due to corrupted system files in index $I30, as these same errors were found and 'fixed' (but obviously not) everytime i ran a chkdsk.



in the end (as i was running vista) i did a clean install of windows 7 and the formating has stopped the error, which means not hardware specific.



Good luck, hope this helps.

Answer 5

Do a disk defrag of your C drive.