pc freeze up

[bronners]

my pc keeps freezing up whilst on the internet, the screen and the mouse just freeze up, so all i can do is turn the pc off at the mains and back on again .would anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this please, as it is happening 2 or 3 times, sometimes more a day, and is getting really annoying, and i would`nt have thought having to turn the pc off like this would do it much good either. any help would be very much appreciated, thank you.

[VHG]

Is it only when using the internet or using other products as well?

Solving problems about a PC freezing is not easy as it could be a load of different things. Do you ever get any messages before or after this happens?

It can be caused by you not having enough memory and Windows will grind to a halt while trying to recover from this. Does the hard disk light flash a lot when it is happening?

Do you know how much memory you have, and have you got plenty of space on your hard disk?

It may be the computer getting too hot. Has it got enough space round it to let in air and keep it cool. Could it be clogged up with dust or fluff. May be a good idea to take it outside and blow the dust and fluff out with a hair drier (set on cool).

It may be you have a bad driver for one of your hardware components (graphics, sound etc). Have you installed new hardware lately, or updated any of your drivers?

If it is none of those things get back to us and I will see if we can suggest anything else.

[bronners]

thanks for the reply vhg,its only when on the internet vhg its ok otherwise. the only message we get sometimes is the usual "your pc has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" .we have plenty of memory its a 500gb h/d not even half full and 3gb of ram. i clean the pc every one or two months like you said. i think the h/d light stays on solid when this happens, any more help gratefully received thanks.

[VHG]

>>> i think the h/d light stays on solid when this happens

That is probably Windows copying all of memory into a file (called a Dump) so people can use this dump file to fix the problem if need be.

Maybe you need to look for messages in the Event Log.

Windows writes loads of messages into a message log so you need to look in there to see if there is any serious error messages.

Open the Control Panel then then find "Administrative Tools" then "Event Viewer".

Have a look at the Windows logs. Mainly the Application Logs and the System Logs.

There will be lots of Information messages but you are looking for Critical Errors or Warnings or Errors.

Note the event viewer does differ between Windows versions so the details above may not be exactly right for your version of Windows.

It may be worth searching in the help for "Event Viewer" for details of how to get to it.

[bronners]

had a look at the event veiwer vhg most say the previous shutdown was unexpected, tho some say server authentication kerberos (never heard of it) could`nt find what it was looking for.

[bronners]

just to add, i looked in the reliability monitor and under application failures it lists searchprotocolhosts.exe and iexplore as stopped working and under misc failures it lists disruptive shutdown don`t know if this means anything to you?