If you have advice treat me like a simpleton and go very slow.

My problem is that my computer has begun crashing on boot up. I say begun it has done it for a few months but now it has got to the stage where to run the computer means booting it 10 times (some times more). It'll crash at any stage, when the OS is running, before it even begins, during scandisk etc. Usually when it has booted and hasn't crashed in the first 10 minutes it'll probably work for the rest of the day. Sometimes it just switches itself off, sometimes it crashes, sometimes it reboots, sometimes the screen just switches off, and sometimes I am left with a multicoloured washed out frozen screen. I had a guy look at it two months ago and he said he found the sasser worm but removed it. But whilst better it mostly carried on crashing. He thinks maybe the hardware is old (the computer is four years old and used daily).

Any ideas? If you can help it would be a godsend.

Also, echoing another thread, I tried to defrag today and my computer told me it couldn't because of an error with wgaerrlog.txt.

Hello obscurelines,

Welcome to PCHF.

Random crashes are normally caused by overheating. Check your external fan at the back of the PC to make sure it is not clogged with dust, as well as and especially your internal CPU fan. This means opening opening your PC case, normally held together by 4 or 6 screws at the back with older PC's. You will find your CPU fan in the centre of the case.

Fragmentation is not normally the cause of a PC to crash. To resolve the error message you get when defragmenting, you need to first run a scandisk to resolve any errors on the disk first. You will find this in the same section as Defragmentation called "Error Checking".

Cheers for that. You could be very right, my computer could be overheating. I began thinking that earlier today and propped the laptop up as it seemed very hot underneath when it had barely been on. That said, I wonder why it doesn't seem to affect it when it has been running for a while, mostly on boot up.

Cheers. Keep the good suggestions coming in.

You can use these programs to check your temperatures. If you give me your PC specs, I can tell you what those maximum temperatures should be.

CPU Temperature Check (Everest Free |MG| Free Download - EVEREST Free Edition 2.20)

HDD Temperature (Hard drive failure prediction, estimate hard drive life software - PalickSoft website <http://www.siguardian.com/>)
The possibility of a crash of your HDD doubles at 40°c and quadruples at 55°c!

All in One (<http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php>)
You can also download an all in one program to do this, but some users seem find this program a little confusing:

Details are:

Time mobile AMD Athlon 4 1600+

1.40ghz 240MB RAM

In my computer's new air-friendly position (raised up at the back) it hasn't crashed once today. This is the first time in more than a month. It does seem to be the overheating.

Depending on which motherboard, the maximum temperature is 70c. If its a newer socket 939 motherboard/cpu, the maximum temperature is 65c.