Computer Freezes

[ben johnson]

I know hardware pretty well, but this problem is kicking my ass, so any help is greatly appreciated.

This is a random problem. It happened twice today, and happened once in the last 2 weeks.

My computer will just freeze. I cant move my mouse or do anything. It's as fronzen as a computer can be. Also when this happens the hard drive light is steadily on and its fully lit and wont turn off until i restart my computer.

Any ideas what's causing this problem?

I figure it's my hard drive, but before I go off buying a new hard drive I wanted to make sure nothing else can cause this problem.

Thanks for your time.

 

[TheMostWantedPolishTwin]

..you said you knew hardware.. but did you run HD's manufacturer diagnostic soft? you do that.. it won't hurt to test your memory either..

 

[4keatimj]

... or every other bit of essential hardware...

Run memtest86+ for a while, at least a few hours, and then give it a run with Prime95. Stress testing the system will show up any irregularities with the board. Heat could be a problem here as well.

Also, make sure that the optical drives are on their own channel, and both are jumpered as master and slave, not just cable select. This has been known to cause some problems in the past.

 

[M@]

Just prior to this happening, did you happen to install the latest Microsoft critical updates?

Just checking because I have the same problem and it only started occurring after installing the latest critical updates. I've had this problem in the past with critical updates on a completely different system and OS.

I'm just trying to figure it out too.