hello, i'm new to mg.com

hi, my name isal and igo by ramblingrambo.i drive a truck and bought this Gateway 840 Gm media center desktop 2 and a half years ago. I still know very little about pc's but i know that i have spent more on this cpu in the last 2 and a half years than i have my pickup i bought two weeks before the computer and it still operates great{the truck that is}. After purchasing the cpu i took a few cpu classes at the local community college. I installed Norton and my cpu has never ever worked perfect but i went for a year not knowing that it was supposed to work alot better than it did. Best Buy installed three new hard drives the last one is a 320 gb hard drive.in november my cpu was useless. i took it to a local shop. he worked on it and installed a nividia 7300 video card some free spyware, malware, anti virus programming. he also doubled the memory for about a total of 340.00 dollars. ok it still glitched, freeze up, and etc. I believe this cpu is cursed.it would turn itself on and off at will like a ghost.
I took it back to him 2 weeks ago. It was freezing up all the time. The dvd burner tray kept opening and closing on its on and also the dvd rom drive. i would have to hit alt. del. to end the tasks. When i took it to him he said he cleaned it and updated my antivirus and antispyware, charged me forty dollars and i am right back where i started. Also the settings change at will and i am the only user, i have a cablehigh speed modem,with high speed service.idon't know where to go next. I think it is a bad motherboard, who knows? i will try anything ijust want my cpu to work right . if it worked right it would be more than i would ever need. I only need a volkswagon. this cpu should be a ferrari but it ain't

 

:wave and welcome to MG's..

You mentioned you installed norton, do you mean norton antivirus?.
Im just asking because you also stated that your local shop also installed an antivirus. if this is true you need to uninstall one of them, as two antivirus programmes will confllict with eachother. norton is a known resource hog and will slow down your system.

As dr m advised, start off with the Basic computer maintenance guide.

good luck