Dell Computer Is Playing Silly Buggers

3 minutes, or 4 minutes or 5 minutes after boot up, my computer freezes with a horrible noise coming from the speakers. At first I blamed Windows (as one would) and tried system restore - when that didn't solve the problem I used Macrium Reflect to restore the boot sector to a known working system from an external drive.

after THAT did not fix the problem, I realised that it MUST me hardware.

I'm happy to try to answer any follow up questions but wondered if anyone out there MAY have experienced something similar. How did you fix it?

Thanks!!!

 

List more information on your PC please. But I will take a shot in the dark so to speak with what you have told. Could be corrupt files causing freeze ups. Causes can be bad hard drive, bad ram, overheating of CPU, bad power supply, or Motherboard.
Clean everything, pull CPU and clean fan and cooler, apply new thermal compound. Blow out all the dust in the power supply.
One of the first things I always do is just look over the motherboard to try and see if anything obvious, leaky bulging caps, are all fans running, and running smoothly. Anything that dont look right. Make sure ram is seated all the way. Pull it ans re-seat it, when you hear the click then you know it is in.
Fire it up and see if that helped. If not...
Try a fresh install of the OS. See how that changes things, maybe even fixes it.
If not:
If you have other parts to change out temporarily that can help you figure it out.
Change one thing at a time , ram, pwr supply...etc.

 

Thank you very much for your kind response. Since the problem arises very soon after switch on, I have to rule out anything to do with overheating. I have already ruled out the OS since it was effectively reinstalled via a Macrium Reflect overwrite of the entire boot sector. I'm not very sure what a leaky bulging cap is or how to spot one.

The PC is a Dell Inspiron running win10 and its 6 years old.

 

Tricky!

In order to completely rule out the o/s and any software and focusing on hardware related issues as the source of your problems, which this certainly smells of, I would boot your laptop with a Linux Live CD.

This will entirely by pass the o/s currently installed on your hard drive and load into ram only.

Booting your laptop with a Linux Live CD should also give an indication of whether there is a hardware issue.

Plenty of YouTube videos to show you how it is done.

Good luck

 

Is it a laptop/desktop?
Things can heat up very quickly, check for very dirty cpu cooler, make sure it is making good contact with the cpu. I have seen broken clips on the coolers.
Where do you keep the image you used with Macrium Reflect, on the same PC?
It is likely not leaky caps but I still look for them anyway.
https://schematicdatanabla55.z21.web.core.windows.net/how-to-check-capacitor-leakage.html

 

I solved this problem and thought it may be beneficial to anyone else who experiences the same issue. The resolution is a bit of a forehead slapper - they usually are. I had too many external drives plugged in to my PC. I pulled all the USB plugs out except one and now the computer works perfectly. It was a "duh!" moment. Advice often given to newly qualified doctors is "If you hear galloping hooves don't think zebras, think horses". I think this maxim could be applied to computer technicians too.

Thanks for the suggestions above.