computer freezes

[hempsall]

What causes a computer to freeze, in laymans terms please. It keeps happening to mine and I end up having to turn it off and start again.

[vehelpfulguy]

It can be all sorts of reasons, hardware or software.

Loads of information is flying around inside the PC case at alarming speeds, between the CPU, memory, hard disk, etc.

If the data gets lost for some reason it can cause all sorts of problem.

Also the wrong "driver" for a device can cause it to freeze.

Sometimes if the case gets too hot the PC can freeze.

Has it just started doing this?

Have you changed anything recently (new memory etc)

Is the inside of the case clogged up with dust and fluff?

Any error messages in the Windows XP event log?

[OBonio]

In your PC lives a little chip called the Central Processing Unit. This chip is responsible for executing instructions. When a computer hangs, this chip gets stuck in a loop somehow doing the same instructions over and over again unable to do anything else until it finishes the loop... which could be never.

[hempsall]

It's been happening for a week or 2 now. I did install Norton security and I wondered whether it could be that. I did it from their website and not being very computer literate i wondered if I'd not done it right but,saying that, the security system seems to be working ok. I will check the casing for dust & fluff. We live in an old house which does tend to be dusty so that could be it. Is it ok to use the hoover pipe?

[sarah_louise]

If you press CTRL/ALT/DEL keys all together you will get a program called task manager. This should list what program is not responding. Even though it is frozen up you should still be able to select Shutdown top row and then restart or turn off. Sometimes you can just select the program that is not responding and terminate that.
Iff you get an error message with a reference ccapp.exe that is usually Norton being unable to close down.
Hope this helps

[Garamond]

If I were you I'd run what they used to call Scandisk. If you need to know how to do it come back to us and we'll explain.