How do I make my PC stop freezing up?

My friend has been having to deal with quite an annoying problem with her computer. After she loads up Windows ME, the computer will function correctly for a short period of time. Suddenly, her computer will start to "slow down," as in it will freeze for a few seconds, and then unfreeze. Moments later it freezes again for a few seconds, and then unfreezes again. It continues to do this until her computer ultimately locks up and freezes completely, thereby forcing her to have to restart it, where the process just starts all over again.

To try to troubleshoot this, she opened up the case and found that her processor was pretty warm, not scorching hot, but warm. We came to the conclusion that perhaps there wasn't enough ventilation through the system and that her processor fan needed a replacement. So she has a new processor fan now. The problem continues to happen, even when the processor is not hot at all.

Also, her cd-rom drive has developed a mind of its own, and will randomly open and close all by itself.

We could greatly use your help in troubleshooting this problem. I don't know if it is a viral problem or something else with the system itself. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

This question was answered on March 12, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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What you can do is a few things One inexpensive way would be to go to this website called cnet.com, when you get there download a spyware program called adware Run that program and if you have spyware on your computer, and more than likely you might, it will remove whatever it is that is causing your system to run strange That might fix your problem with the cd-rom As far as the computer running very slow, you may have a lot of programs running in the background that are using a lot of system resources If so, then you need to go into selective startup by opening the run command and typing sysreg in the field When that opens, uncheck all the programs from startup that arent necessary for the computer to start, such as AOL and things of that nature Save your changes and let the computer reboot If these 2 solutions dont work then you will need to check your physical memory (RAM) and you may need to replace it Your computer should now be problem free.

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Posted by Student of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on March 12, 2004

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