My comp is freezing/crashing not only to desktop but worse....

For about the last month or so, whether im online playing World Of Warcraft or simply browsing, or offline playing the Movies, my comp will occaisonally crash to the point where I have to manually unplug the cpu and reboot- not sure exactly what this problem is called as Im sure there is a name for it but its not just crashing to desktop but even worse its crashing and the green indicator light on my monitor turns orange and my cpu starts to ramp up and the only way to reboot is to unplug it and replug.

After I reboot I receive 1 of 2 "error" screens from Microsoft claiming its either a driver issue or some sort of RAM memory or power failure (Im assuming the "power failure" message is from me unplugging).

I have followed the directions on these Microsoft advice pages about reinstalling my drivers: I went to the Nvidia site and downloaded the latest driver- went to the Microsft site but they didnt list any drivers for download.

In the past month I havent really installed any new software except some games- Age of Empires III (Microsoft), Dungeon Siege 2 (Microsoft), The Movies (Activision/ Lionhead), and Civ4 (Firaxis).

I went ahead and uninstalled all of those games and the problem persists.

I vaguely remember a while back also after installing one of these games (I think) that my new hardware wizard program (but I havent installed any new hardware), or software(?) wizard searching for something but couldnt locate it.

On another note and perhaps related to my crash issue, and a problem that Ive been aware for the past year or so, is that for some reason my comp is not allowing me to do a system restore as after I go thru the process all the way to picking a resore point, having my comp reboot, and the screen comes up and says: "unable to restore your computer to this point" (and system resore is enabled).

I also receive automatic updates from Microsoft.

My system specs:

Windows XP
Sony Vaio, Pentium 4, 2.8 mghz- about 2 and 1/2 years old.
1 Gig ram
Nvidia 6800 gt

Of course anything is possible but Im guessing its not spyware or a virus as Ive dealt with those issues a few times here on this site- Thanks!- and Im not picking anytrhing up in Hijackthis, Ad-Aware, Webroot Spysweeper, and Norton Anti-virus.

Thanks ahead of time for any advice.

 

The problem is still occuring....seems to happen randomnly.

Any ideas?

 

The first thing I would try is to disconnect from the internet. Then disable system restore. Then reboot in safe mode and run your spyware and virus tools. Then go from there.