Motherboard or... something else?

[Warslut]

Alright boys. Lets see if you guys still got it.

I got a problem. A few months back my computer decided to start locking up on me. No idea why... so figured, alright whatever. I reformatted it. Same problem, still does it frequently. Seems to a lot less when I disable my wireless card. And if I play music while the internet is on it's almost instant freeze. No viruses, nothing, I'm assuming it's just getting old, but rather than replace the whole thing I'd rather try and figure out what's wrong. It's still a good, quick computer. Below is a screenshot of my specs and processes's running.

Cheers.

[The Mob]

which wireless card are you using?
b/c i think i may have had a similar problem like you.
basically, my wireless card was taking up way to much memory. (the program that came with it).
i solved that issue by letting windows take care of the wireless card.

i doubt you have a hardware issue.

[Warslut]

It's a Linksys wireless card, and like I said it does still lock up with is disabled, just not nearly as frequently. So I'm not toally sure that's the only problem.

[SpoonMan999]

Is it running hot? I'd download a program to check the temp of your proc while running idle and then at load. If it gets too hot go ahead and disable your wireless card and see if it makes a significant difference.

[Warslut]

Well see it will also do this if it's been off all day and sometimes freezes before it even fires up. I'll try that though

[Frai7ty]

Have you cleaned the dust out of you computer within the last six months? If not I would recommend getting some compressed air, and blowing all the dust out, as that can insulate your computer, and make it over heat, and therefor lock up.

[Warslut]

I did breifly about 2 months ago but I can try to do it a bit better.

[The Mob]

even with it disabled huh? hmm
it could be another program that is doing it.. but you said that you reformatted it, and it is still locking up.
ya, what spoon said, id check the heat

[Warslut]

Well I took the wireless card right out of the comp and ran it for about 3 hours with Fable open and windows media player playing in the BG, didn't freeze... weird. Maybe it is something to do with that?

It's a D-Link to, not a Linksys :S my bad.

I'd also like to note, that since this started my computer doesn't like to remember anything, I can click remember me everytime on Facebook as an example and it never does.

[FrogMan]

When you do a proper shutdown of windows it will "remember your settings" if its constantly restarting by itself then it won't also could be your cache has not bee allocated properly for IE.

[Jammer74]

Sounds to me like you have a problem with the D-link card,my computer is very similiar to yours,except that i'm running an amd 64 bit 2.2gig,with 1.5 gigs of ram,and a dlink card,as well.The problem started with overheating(didn't clean my comp for about a year,lol).Apparantly,dlink cards are extremely heat sensitive.I also started out by disabling my wireless,finally,I ended up cleaning my computer and replacing the dlink card.Problem solved.

[Warslut]

Well the card is also right under a piece in the computer that gets really hot, but like I said it sometimes freezes right when the computer has just turned on, so it can't be just heat. I'm going to try a new card though and see what happens.

Thanks FrogMan for that tip, I should of clued into that.

[The Mob]

heh.. weird thing is.. the exact same thing happened to me at one point. and i have a dlink card. lol
it turns out that the program that comes with the card was really really bad. it would constantly try to rescan and stuff. it ate all of my memory. to the point where i deleted everything, including the driver, and just had windows reinstall everything w/o their stupid program

netgear wont do that to you. i have a netgear card in my computer as well (ya i never bothered to remove it)

[Warslut]

Well my dlink was installed by Windows update, I never used any specific Dlink programs =\.

Also like to note... it seems odd but the computer seems to freeze a fair bit less in safe mode...

Edit again, tried a new wireless USB thing and removed NIC and still froze... did nothing.

[The Mob]

oh geez.
then get a whole new motherboard. lol

ooo.. try running a memtest. Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool
that will test if you have faulty RAM.
if you have a floppy drive, you want to download the one that says Download - Pre-Compiled package for Floppy (DOS - Win)
and then follow these steps

To install Memtest86:
- Extract the files from the zip archive
- Open the directory where the files were extracted and click on "install.bat".
- The install program will prompt you for the floppy drive and also prompt you to
insert a blank floppy.
- To run Memtest86 leave the floppy in the drive and reboot.

if you need any further directions, its all in the readme