I recently had a problem my pc, basically, it would freeze, sometimes with pink and green vertical lines appearing accross the screen. The only way to restart the computer was to do it manually, but it wouldn't start, at all.

The fans would run, but nothing would appear on the monitor.

I have since decided to get a new pc and am waiting for it to arrive. The pc was very old after all, and I wasn't great at keeping up to date with security.

In the meantime, I am using my laptop, but just two hours ago, I had the same problem, it froze, I switched it off, then back on, but nothing.

Somehow I managed to re-install windows on it, and here I am asking for help. How can this same problem happen to two completely different machines? Is it anything to do with external software I'm using?

I just don't want it to happen to my new pc when it arrives. Re-installing windows everytime I want to use the machine won't be much fun at all.

I hope someone can help, thanks in advance.

That's a hard question to answer with out knowing what software you are putting on it.

Also go to the laptops manufacture site and get the latest BIOS update.plus do you run and have windows update set for automatic updates?

There are alot of different things that can cause a lock up.not enough memory to much running in the back ground,spy and adware a virus.Hardware failure, courrupted sys files,IRQ conflicts,wrong drivers or you may need to update your drivers over heating from dust preventing air flow.might need to defrag the hard drive and run disc cleanup, registry problems lots of different things.

I appreciate that, thanks, the strange thing is of course, the laptop had been formatted, and windows put on afresh, so it was like running a new machine, and it had the exact same problem as the pc which had been running for over four years. So I think it must be a piece of software, or hardware that was connected to both machines that caused the problem. And bearing in mind the laptop only had a couple of downloaded software installed, I think I can narrow it down.

Anyone know if it's possible for a mouse to get a virus?
Or a modem?
Or could emule be the problem? Bearing in mind I've been using that for years without having any problems.

A mouse or modem won't get a virus but the drivers can get corrupt.