Computer crashes randomly, can't locate the problem, help appreciated?

Question

My computer, running windows XP, an HP pavilion a530n with 1gb ram/256mb nvidia 6600gt (upgraded from originals years ago) has been crashing lately (complete lockup) at random intervals.

Nothing seems to be in common with the crashes, my latest was when i was using photoshop, sometimes i crash when playing games, or just plain surfing the web. No error messages are displayed when I hard reboot.

All norton antivirus/spybot s&d/adaware scans come up clean. Also cleaned the registry using CCleaner. I updated all drivers and installed all windows updates. So far nothing has been of help. I leave my case side open and using speedfan concluded that it was not overheating issues.

I'm seriously at a loss of what to do, usually i can find the solutions on my own but the only thing I really have left to do is a full system reformat which I would really like to avoid losing everything, most of it will probably be unobtainable.

Any suggestions people may have as to what the problem may be, and hopefully some fixes I may be able to try would be really helpful and much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

go to this site,just type in --  windows onecare safety scanner          

Answer 2

Sorry no idea, my car does the same.

Is your puter overheating? Is the fan working?

My car overheats too.

Answer 3

http://www.computerprogram.com

                    ---good   luck,..  bye,..,

Answer 4

You could have System Errors

Boot into safe mode go to C:\ and set it to scan for errors bu right click properties tools fix errors follow from there and reboot on reboot windows will scan and fix errors

Answer 5

It may be overheating.  Check to make sure the cooling fan is working properly.  

The typical symptom of an overheating computer is when it locks (freezes up) too much and issues errors of General Protection Failure (“This program has carried out an illegal operation and will shut down”) and the infamous “blue screen of death”. If you remove the case’s cover and, with the computer open, the computer stops being troublesome, the problem is overheating.

Answer 6

It could be your RAM memory that's at fault. Are you getting blue screen crashes?

Answer 7

Power Supply - a bad (or insufficient) power supply is the most common cause for random crashes, especially if you have a lot of cards, drives, or fans, or have a dual-processor motherboard. A 350W or 400W power supply is recommended if you're experiencing this problem.

A mix of FAT32 and NTFS drives - If you have more than one hard disk, and there are different file systems on each one, try converting them all to NTFS.

USB Hub: - if you have a USB hub, try eliminating it and see if that solves the problem (especially if you have a USB-based Palm cradle and your system crashes every time you hotsync).

Bad memory: - a bad memory module can cause this problem. Try removing one of the modules (if applicable) to see if that solves the problem; rotate through all modules until you've found the culprit. Note that some computers require memory to be installed in pairs, so, for example, if you have four modules, you'll have to remove two (no more, no fewer) for this test.

Good Luck!!

Answer 8

It could be the battery on the motherboard.  If the BIOS gets settings to messed up things can happen.

Answer 9

check your cpu temperature.. take a vaccume cleaner and blow out the fans and the heat sinks.. excess heat will reboot you

something else to consider is if you  have been adding stuff and as your power supply ages.. it might be tripping off due to aged components/ heat/overload

my guess is it's tripping off cus of heat on cpu.. or your powersupply is going..