Dear Sir or Madam,

I am at a bit of a lose - my newish (top of the range Packard Bell 2ish years ago) pc keeps on crashing, and has always crashed since I got it through a company purchase scheme, for one reason or another I didn't get round to sending it back when it was under guarantee [possibly i suspected it was my fault for a poor install of something].

It crashes for varying reasons; either I am downloading, or playing a game, or for no reason at all - just because it felt like it (or so it seems). Basically the computer freezes completely (no mouse movement or anything - and I swear the fan noise cranks up a notch) i have to then physically turn it off for the computer to reboot an load up again - and it happens more often than not when I am downloading from the net, from a a variety of sources.

I have reset the computer to how it was when i recieved it (manufacturers) - using the windows xp go-back feature - this made no difference to the intermittant crashing.
I have just purchased the latest norton anti-virus 2006 and removed the old versionthis has not helped either.
I have swept for spy ware/mal ware/ tupper ware but also this has been to no avail.
I wonder if it could be a driver problem, but my wonderings are merely a lack of understanding/ludite speculations.

Sadly I am fairly computer literate in the office, but when it gets to the nitty gritty I am at a loss. If I wanted to work out what is causing the crashing problem where should I begin?

Is there a tool that records what causes windows to crash?
What are the most common causes for a total systems crash?
For a newbie who is literate but not techinically so where should I begin/learn?

If you could provide any help or guidance I would greatly appreciate it - or if this topic has been covered in another post and you could point me in the right direction that would be great too.

Sincerely Yours
Pete

If it's a regular occurrence I'm sure it's hardware failure. Possibly your memory sticks or your powerpack.

It is VERY unusual for xp to crash... when it does it record the problems under: right click My Computer on your Desktop... click Manage... click Event Viewer ... what do the reports say?

I would agree with HappyBeaver that this sounds like a hardware issue.

XP issues usually reboot with blue screen errors. A freeze is generally hardware.

There is a RAM test here: http://www.memtest86.com/

The manufacturer of your hard drive will also have a diagnostic. Here are the major brands: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

If the RAM and the Hard Drive check OK the Graphics Card would be the next suspect followed by the Power Supply.

Hardware failures don't usually leave any logs as they just freeze up but you can try besides the Event Viewer:

Also view your Error Log via:
[1] Start Menu
[2] Help and Support
[3] Pick a Task
[4] Tools
[5] Advanced System Information
[6] View the Error Log

If you want to try and analyze the XP errors:

Go to start | search (type in) .dmp
Note the location of your .dmp files.

Then:

1) Download and install the
Debugging Tools from Microsoft
2) Download and install this
debugwiz
3) Open the Wiz & Browse to, or paste in the path to, your .dmp file.
4) After the Wiz creates a Text document attach it back to this thread.

Thank you the help, I will look tonight and feedback the results. I really appreciate the assistance.

KR

Pete