My computer randomly freezes...

[UltramarineX]

Hello everybody.

First off, apologies if this thread is in the wrong section of the forums. Well, as my thread title already states, the problem that I am currently having is that my computer freezes randomly. Admittedly, most of the time my computer freezes are when I’m either playing a computer game, or having several applications running at once. However, there have been a couple of occasions when I left my computer on with barely anything running (other than, let’s say, a video file that’s paused), and when I come back, my computer still freezes. Here are my current system specs:

Motherboard: Asus P4P800 SE
Power supply: 480W made by Thermaltake
Processor: Pentium 4 3.2 GHz
RAM: 2GB PC3200 DDR Dual-channeled (these are two 1GB sticks)
Video Card: 512MB ATI Radeon X1650 AGP 8x (with the latest drivers)
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Hard Drive(s):
- Two internal drives: a 40GB and 250GB hard drive made by Maxtor (model unknown)
- One 500GB external hard drive made by a no-name company (and it’s usually kept off unless I need it)
OS: Windows XP with SP2

Here is what I have tried out so far:
1) I switched out my video card (the X1650) with a newer card (a 512MB ATI Radeon 2600 HD), but the problem still occurs
2) I ran a check on my RAM using a program called Memtest86+, but the test comes out with no problems
3) I thought maybe it was my cooling, however I have the side of my case open, and the temperature for the room with my computer is fairly cool
4) I ran a virus scan, and nothing comes up

I’m pretty much at a loss as to what could be going on to cause my computer to freeze. Any help and suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[hughv]

Start with Event viewer and look for System/Application errors.
Control Panel/Admin Tools/Event Viewer
Asus boards have a temp monitor program that might help.

[ian_422]

Mite be a problem with a process thats running, you can check the event viewer as hughv suggested that will tell you what apps are behaving outside of normal operation, also you might want to try going into the MSCONFIG and disableing some of the startup items that you dont need.

[UltramarineX]

Thanks for the replies.

Regarding the temperature, I use a program called Speedfan to check the temp on my computer. It tells me that nothing on my computer is running hotter than 49 degrees celcius, so I think temperature is fine.

I took a look at the event viewer, and I noticed that under "System", I have a lot of errors with "ati2mtag". This leads me to believe that my video card drivers may be the problem (but not my video since, as I mentioned, I already tried different cards). I'm going to try switching to older drivers from a time before my system started freezing, and see if that works.

However, if anyone else can suggest something for me to try, feel free to post.

[hughv]

I Googled ati2mtag and found many people with this error, but no hard and fast solutions, other than "get the latest drivers".

[UltramarineX]

Hmmm...well, using older drivers didn't seem to work either.

There was something I also forgot to mention as well regarding my computer "freezing". For example, when I watch a video on Windows Media Player, and the computer appears to freeze (i.e. can't move mouse, looping sound), I can still usually access the Task Manager using alt-ctrl-del. I still can't move the mouse, but I can move through different tabs using the arrow keys. I guess this means my computer doesn't 100% "freeze". Could this fact mean something else is going on with my computer?