Computer acting weird

I'm having a problem (obviously) with my computer. After my computer has been on for about an hour, the mouse starts freezing momentarily, I have Dramatic, and I've tried defraging the ram, but it doesn't help. Any suggestions?

Specs:

1.8 Ghz Pentium 4
512 MB PC 133 Sdram
Geforce 4 ti 4400

 

Well you could try a virus scan. If you don't have a virus scanner you can download one off this site or you can go to here . Also maybe you are running too many programs at once like msn, yahoo, aim, icq and a game or something with a few browsers open, which can really kill out your ram. I'm not sure but you can try but I think it may be a virus.

 

Other possibilities:

- Overheating (check your fans)

- Check for spyware using one of the spyware scanners posted here at Geeks

- Next time it happens (assuming this is Win2K or XP) open task manager, click on processes tab, click on "CPU" header. This will sort processes by CPU use. See if anything other than the idle process is using all your CPU cycles.

Hope this helps...

 

oh and with the CPU thing dont worry about system idle processes. heh. all that does is use the rest of the idle plu cycles, so that will always look big

 

Is there anyway to know for sure if this is being caused by overheating? Is there a program I can use that can tell me how hot it is inside the case?