:wave:
I turn on my laptop - an Acer Aspire 5002, running XP -in the morning... it maybe works perfectly fine for an hour or two.:agree:

Then, it'll either restart or go to a blue screen.:nervous:

I get various stops each time, some repeat, some I have only seen once. 0x0000004E (I have seen many times) 0x0000008E (I have seen a few times) 0x00000023 (I have seen once) 0x0000000A (I have seen once) and there are many others I cannot think of at the moment.

After the computer restarts (or I restart it) it might work for a few minutes, then it does the same thing again, or it might not even start up at all.:nope:

Sometimes it will lock up. The screen will get a little funny, like 'big pixels' (maybe a quarter of an inch, not much larger) across the screen all the way in a few lines or in spots in colors like blue or pink or brownish yellow.:bs_lame:

I have to let the computer sit for several hours just so I can use it again, for an hour or two.

I have updated service packs and used hot fixes described on microsoft.com that are supposed to help with the stop messages that I have received. Nothing helps.

This has happened a few times before - and after updating and whatnot to no resolve, I ran a defrag on both of my drives. Fixed everything, computer worked flawlessly. However, it is not working now. I can hardly get the computer to stay on long enough to do a full defrag of one drive.

I can't seem to get into safe mode, unless I'm supposed to wait while? But I have selected it through F8 after start up and it won't load after several minutes of waiting.:idunno:

Any help?

Need any more info?

I'm not computer savvy when it comes to things such as this, so please be patient and explain things - if you can and have the time - it will be much appreciated, if not, I'll try and figure it out.:notworthy:

Please and thank you for your time.

not sure if this will help, but sounds like a heat problem, have you checked the vents to see if they are clear.