Pc Keeps on crashing

[freak_unique]

Wonder if anyone can help me, recently my pc just started freezing, and restarting itself and sometimes wouldnt boot up, my dad said to do a system restart about a month ago and it was fine for about a month but today it has started again. I did another system restart but the same problem keeps on happening, sometimes the mouse cursor just freezes in its spot but as i move the mouse around the icons highlight as if the arrow should be in top of them but the arrow is still frozen to the same spot. I was wondering if anyone had any idea what this could be? Is it likely to be a hardware error or a virus or anything? AVG hasnt picked up any viruses. The strange thing is my housemate is having exactly the same problem as me lately but not to the full extent that Im getting it- maybe a virus from a website we both visit i dont know? Any idea? thanks in advance :)

[vehelpfulguy]

It may be getting too hot.

After a while the fans and heat sinks, and air outlets, get clogged with dust and dirt.

This can cause certain parts of the PC to run too hot and stop working.

Are you perhaps having building work done and there is lots of dust and dirt in the house ?

Take the PC case outdoors, remove the covers, blow out any dirt with a hair drier, carefully loosen any dirt or dust which is stuck to fans with something (not metal) like a small brush or lolly stick.

Make sure all dust has been blown out, and fans still work, put cover back on and try again.

[vehelpfulguy]

Also make sure that when you use the PC there is plenty of space around the case for heat to disappear.

If the PC case is in a small compartment there is nowhere for the heat to go and the whole thing gets too hot.

[Bigeye74]

IMHO the problem could be spyware. Download Adaware (google it and its free) and run it. Also, you may be running too many background processes for your PC to handle. Try Add/Remove Programs in the control panel and clear out anything not required. Is AVG a Norton product? If it is get rid and use something like AVAST (free again). Norton is difficult to uninstall so look for an uninstaller on their site.
Google this one too - your page file may be the wrong size.
If all else fails do a fresh system install (back up all your important data) and make sure that you load on the anti virus (not norton) and anti spyware software before starting anything else.
I found about 800 spyware instances the first time I ran the software and I had been running a firewall and an antivirus.

[ACtheTROLL]

Hang on ....you are re-starting windows only about once a month ... !!!!!!!!!!!!

Apart from the waste electricity ... once a month isn't bad.
if you had a virus ... you'd me counting the minutes not the weeks ........

If windows freeze but reacts as if the mouse is working .... it's possible that windows is just having a little clearout ....
clean out all your temp files.
right click on c drive and use the disc cleanup option

then
I assume XP?
hit ctrl+alt+del - if the task manager does manage to start .... look in performance to see how hard the processor is working and then look to see which process is hogging the time (ignore the system idle process ...)

[Bigeye74]

Only once a month....he may be downloading loads of copyright free media!!!

[freak_unique]

Hey thanks guys in the end the whole pc died so had to get a new one - it was the motherboard and hard drive.
ACthetroll - what I meant was it started playing up a month ago having to be restarted about every 10mins or turning itself off, and then it started happening again restarting and turning itself off every few mins so i couldnt do anything on it at all! Its all fixed now got new pc woo!
Cheers for your answers :)