hi Tidyboy and welcome to PCHF!

From my personal experience, I'd start with your video drivers. If you know the make of your video card, it should be fairly easy to find an updated driver for it. Based on your assesment of know-how I'm going to assume you know how to do this but if not don't fear the question as it's mankinds greatest tool.

I'd start by updating your video drivers, if that doesn't work, try the sound drivers next. Then your chipset drivers. To get those you will need to know the make and model number of your motherboard and preferably the chipset (normally Intel, AMD, NForce, SiS).

Once you've downloaded the driver that you are going to update, make sure you remove the old driver, just to be thorough.

To acquire the makeup of your computer, click on the "What's inside your PC?" at the bottom of this message. Download the free Auditor.

Have updated the device drivers for the video card, sound card and processor, will keep you lot posted with latest developments.

it's definitely a device driver. Do what DAR recommends, and then post back if it happens again....also, if you've added any new peripherals, I'd remove them (scanner, printer, etc) and see if that also stops the occurrence.

thanks,

v

I got the latest drivers for all my hardware last night and had some more crashes this morning. I've not installed any new peripherals so that rules that out. It's a strange problem because again, once the crashes started occurring, ranging from Windows Live Messenger to DrWatson, all spontaneously with no specific trigger of events, I restarted the computer and everything is fine! Worst comes to the worst would a format solve it?

maybe. If you reformat and then put bad drivers back on, you are just back to the original problem. less some data. Try this:

go to start > run > eventvwr.msc. That will open an explorer like window with applications, security, and system in the left pane. Click on system and see if there are any exclamation points near to when it last froze; if so, double click on the item in the right pane, click on the two pieces of paper to copy it to your clipboard, and then come back here and paste the results. Then do the same for the applications folder; look for any exclamation marks that are near in time to when your pc is freezing.


thanks,

v