Serious problem - ME Freezes constantly

Ok - Had this PC about 5-6 months and bought it brand new.

It's:

Win Me
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 3DNow, 2.1Ghz
512MB RAM

Basically I'll be happily using my PC without problems and then suddenly it'll just stop dead. The mouse will not respond - the keyboard will not respond. Crt,Alt,Del does nothing. The computer will just buckle up and the only solution is to restart it. Obviously this is somewhat annoying as it's preventing me doing things on my PC.

It seems to happen more often than not when I'm trying to run things. Such as MSN, Dreamweaver, the internet or Counter-Strike etc.

I've scanned for trojans and viruses using up to date scanners and nothing is found. I've tried turning off all but the most essential background programs and still it buckles up.

When I run CS (an online game) it'll let me connect to a server and freeze after about 30-40-50 seconds. MSN it seems to be more patient with and gives me about 15 mins.

My gut feelings is that it's the fan. There's a 'vent' type thing on the side of the PC casing where air is expelled from the PC - I remember when I first bought the PC the air that come out of it was quite cold (used to chill my legs if I went on the PC without shoes on ). However now the air that comes out of it is 'warm' - so I am wondering if the fan has either broke or somehow become damaged and is not working properly - resulting in the PC overheating and buckling up either because of this or as a safety measure to prevent serious damage being done.

Basically I'd like to know if there's any way to check if this is the case - it'd be handy if I could know for sure what the problem is before I have to get a proffesional to look at it.

Thanks - any replies appreciated - need help asap!

 

Hi Richard86
Welcome to the boards! Try taking the side off the tower and taking a look to see that all the fans are spinning. In particular, the one on the processor. Try running it without the side on, and if you have a house fan, point it to the inside of the box. Does it make a difference?

 

Win ME is probably the worst ever POS OS released by MS. Your CPU and RAM is more than sufficient to run Windows 2000 or XP - Either one. Take your pick. The lock ups and freezes are common for any Win9.x based OS it it manages memory and resources much more poorly than WinNT based OSes.

I bought a Dell 4100 4 years ago and couldn't get Win ME off my computer fast enough. Like you I had similar problems and got rid of it and setup a dual-boot with Win98/W2K.