Computer hanging.

I hope someone can help. I’ve been having problems with my pc for a while.
At first I was getting flickering on the screen where it would just blackout for a second and then carry on as normal. It seemed to be whenever I used the mouse. Then the display started to freeze completely after an hour or two of use. When it does this I can’t use my mouse or any programs, ctrl alt del doesn’t work, and I can’t even shutdown via the normal channels. All I can do is press the power button till it shuts down and then restart. At the moment I can only use my pc for about 5 minutes before the big freeze. Yesterday, I could only just get past the welcome screen, as it would freeze after a few seconds while my desktop and programs were loading. It’s the same wether I’m using the internet or programs or just browsing folders There is usually no error message, but on the occasions where there have been, they’ve usually been related to the graphics card. Some of the things I’ve tried are:

Cleaning inside pc, including graphics card. There was some white chalky stuff caked to what I believe is called a transistor. It has scraped off now, but it made no difference. Could this have blown?

Anti-virus, Trojan, malware etc scanning. Nothing particularly unusual found.

Checked device manager properties for hardware conflict. No conflicts.

Used selective startup in msconfig to try and stop too much loading at once. No change.

Tried to do a repair install of windows. It asks me for the administrator password which I type, then it does nothing. I was under the impression that the repair started automatically after that, but it just leaves me with a C:\windows command prompt and no instruction of what to do next.

Checked for updates for graphics card and mouse drivers. Newest versions already installed.

Tried system restore. No joy.

Uninstalled possible suspect programs. Still no joy.

Last known good configuration makes no difference.

One error message was ‘Thread stuck in device driver’ and I’ve had event IDs 7001 and 7026. Safe mode works fine. I’ve had to type this in safe mode on Word, and copy and paste into this thread because I never know how much time I’ll get before it hangs, so sorry for rambling but I need to give you all the info I can as I may not be able to get back on the net for while.

I’m on Windows XP. The card is Nvidia GeForce mx 440.

Any suggestions before I take this heap of junk to the tip?

Thanks.

 

Thanks Tim. I'll do that. Is this the sort of behaviour you would normally expect from a computer with a blown transistor then?

 

Hi. Since you are observing symptoms pretty regularly after the same length of time after boot-up, it sounds a bit like a heat-related problem. A hard drive about to go is the first thing that comes to mind. I guess a video card might be another possibility. It sounds like either a trip to the shop, or, if you are a brave soul, and have access to another hard drive and other known good components which you could swap out, you might find the problem yourself. Be sure you power down and wait several minutes before experimenting. Good night and good luck.

 

New graphics card arriving tomorrow. I thought I may aswell use it as a chance to upgrade since I found a good one fairly cheap. I'll look at the hard drive option if that doesn't help. Thanks Sloopy