Ok, before I start, I’m not a computer wizz so bare with me!!

A few days a go my pc froze, thought nothing of it, rebooted worked fine for a few hours, froze, rebooted worked fine the rest the day..

got a new mouse and keyboard in the post ( Microsoft basic wireless optical desktop in case its of any relevance to anything) installed it, got it working, fine.
later that evening my pc froze again, and ever since its been freezing between every 30 secs of start up n 1 hour of start up.
all that happens is well nothing it just stays frozen receiving nothing from the mouse or the keyboard at all, if at the time it happens to be playing an audio clip either in the form of music or the little start up tune, it hangs on that note too, and just squeals at me. only way I can fix it is to reboot by pressing power button for 8 seconds. and then it’ll freeze randomly again.
I uninstalled the keyboard and mouse and put the old ones back on, no fix, I’ve system restored by 3 weeks back to well before I had any problems, I’ve virus scanned, spyware scanned got new graphics drivers keyboard and mouse drivers virus scanned again but in safe mode just to be sure. And I just can’t work it out, I’m all out of ideas, so if anyone can help ill be sooo great full

ill bung in some pc info in case its needed,

I got an Evesham pc which is 3 years old ( 3 years old on Tuesday to be precise)

System Information
------------------
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)
BIOS: Award Medallion BIOS v6.0
Processor: AMD Athlon(TM) XP1800+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.2GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Page File: 316MB used, 931MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce3 Ti 500

Sound Devices
-------------
Description: SB Audigy Audio [FF80]


once again thank you so much your all great and I owe you one

claire

is your anti-virus up to date?
tried uninstaling/re-instaling sp2 or reinstaling xp?

To try to see some Error Messages:
check your event viewer for system or application errors that relate to a freeze time.
Start > Run > eventvwr.msc

Look for Red X errors that coincide with a freeze. Times are listed. Post back Error messages.

Yes my virus scans up2 date, so I’m pretty much sure its not a virus I’ve got ( although there’s obviously a possibility ones snuck past Norton internet security I guess)
and in response of the errors here’s what I've found.


application

there’s a few warnings which say

Windows saved user CLAIRE\Claire Pegg registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

and in terms of errors there a few that say

Faulting application nmain.exe, version 103.0.2.10, faulting module ascompbr.dll, version 2005.1.1.3, fault address 0x00009179.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

security

no errors

system
there’s significantly more little red crosses, actually every other log pretty much is an error( a few of which is due to my non plugged in scanner but ill ignore those)

the others say

The Application Management service terminated with the following error:
The specified module could not be found.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
there’s also a lot which say

DCOM got error "This service cannot be started in Safe Mode " attempting to start the service Symantec Core LC with arguments "-Service" in order to run the server:
{60C70E11-2B08-4798-B366-C8450CDA7B1A}

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
or

The IPSEC Services service depends on the IPSEC driver service which failed to start because of the following error:
A device attached to the system is not functioning.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

once again thank you for your help and speedy replies,

Claire

have you tried ad-aware? download it at http://www.digital-solutions.co.uk/c...nload.cgi?ID=1

ive got it already, had it for a good few years, and yep it is the most recent version and yes it is up2 date.. ive also defragmented my pc just for the hell of it

im complely out of ideas

Several of those errors point to Norton (Symantec). What are you running from them?
Anti Virus & Firewall? Do you also have SP2 firewall enabled? Was your Norton's recently installed or revised?

Is the problem still basically the same?
Was the computer working ok with SP2 for a while before this?

The next time it happens note the time, then check the Event Viewer again.
In details post also these:
Source & Event ID

Also after a freeze & manual power down; unplug the computer from the power outlet for a couple minutes.

ok, just a little update. no the sp2 firewall is not inabled, ive had norton on mysystem since i got the pc, and the most recent upgrade was to internet security 2005 a good few months back, sp2 has been operating fine for some time.
the pc got progressivly worse untill it would crash on start up, shut down and wouldnt let me open any programs, so i decided it was time to call evesham, who i gotthrough 2 without being on hold and withought being redirected to some forign call centre which was quite nice.
they helped me try numerous diff procedures and eventually we reinstall windows, but
dum dum dum it froze about 5 min after reinstalling windows xp!!
called them back and managed to complelty baffle 4 different technitions who eventally decided they had no clue as wed tried everything possible( there were extreemly helpful btw) and said even though my free on site callout had expired 3 days previously a technition would be over thursday and would proceded to dismantle my pc hand check it all out and stay untill the probelm was entirly fixed, and they even volinteered to reinstall all my software to save me the hassle ( all of corse at no cost) so untill tursday im restricted to my laptop. but ill post back when i have any updates

sorry its taken so long to reply, what with school n work and shows, i havnt had a free moment.

evesham sent out a technition who spent 2 hours replacing everything imaginable to locate the cause of the problem, one of the fans inside had committed suacide, so he susected that was the problem, so replaced it, but that wasnt the problem, as after a reboot it still froze.
took out the dial up modem as he thought that could be the problm ( wasnt , but left it out as i never use it)

turns out it was the graphics card, as far as i can work out the fan had caused the graphics card to overheat and kill itself and in turn was heating up everything else causing the computer to spontaniously crash.

well to cut a long story short, he replaced the graphics card with a nice new ( much faster and better) one, gave the pc a general fine tuning, reinstalled all my software to save me the hassle, even backed up all my data from my laptop to the pc, gave me all new drivers etc.
then had a cup of tea as we oogled over cars ( db9) and my dads jag parked on the drive. and the fact that he wanted my laptop " coz it was cool" and then went on hios way, leaving me with an updated onsite warantee of another year!!!

( not bad concidering my warantee had actually ran out a few days prevously so evesham coud have actually said sorry nothing we can do, n i would have had to accept it)

clairey the very happy fairy
xxx

oh and ps, merry xmas everyone