Hubby's PC started to misbehave today

First the mouse randomly started not working. Then his pc started to just freeze. Now, it freezes if he dares to walk away from it, i.e. isn't moving stuff around on the screen. Seems to be the entire machine. The HDD isn't running, etc.

He's running Win XP SP3, and has a sh*tload of programs running in the processes tab of the Task Manager.

This actually all started when he obtained and installed a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking 11/11.5. That's long gone, but it appears to have left large footprints all over his machine.

It started out as a Dell Optiplex 745, but has added 3Gig RAM, an nVidia Video card, external sound and network USB additions. He has two HDDs in the case, one is 1T and the other is . . . prolly 500Gig.

Please help. He's driving me crazy. I tell him that torrent software can't be trusted, but oh, no, Tribler is oh, so safe even tho is causes faults and errors and I'm gonna smack him.

Anyone?

Bueller?

 

To start with try running ccleaner http://majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Slim_d4191.html if you haven't already.

 

That's typical of some connection being loose. Try disconnecting everything you can manage without and unplug/replug at both ends those that remain. If you are up to it go inside and check all the connections there and reinsert the memory cards. Take anti-static precautions first if you intend doing that.

 

CCleaner did very good things, thank you! It stayed up and running until . . .

Whenever he tried to run his (already installed) anti-virus, AVG, it froze. Thought it might be the software. Uninstalled AVG, installed Avast. Avast installed fine, but once again, froze during running. He's currently trying to reboot into safe mode to run Avast, don't know if that's going to work.

Are we betting it's a virus of some sort? He does have Malwarebytes installed. He has not tried to run it yet.

It shouldn't be a hardware issue, I haven't been in the box for a month. I usually do cleanings at least that often, if I can get him to turn his machine off.

 

First thing be for we continu i would recommend Defraging the Hard drive be for any thing uninstalling and installing program constant can ware and tear on the HD Does not matter how big the HD is.

 

Hi my friend , welcome to MG's :major

You can download this cd

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

burning it to dvd with

http://www.majorgeeks.com/ImgBurn_d4870.html

running memtest86 for five hours at least even you are able to run the diagnostic hdd test , you have to go to

Start
Run mmc devmgmt.msc
navigating to Disk Drive opening submenu
there is a code , you have to post it here :wave

 

I d/l'd the files and then got lost. I'm sure the answer you gave made sense to you, but I'm lost, lol.

I understand burning the ISO to the CD, but do I only burn the ISO? Do I burn the other files that are in the HirensBootCD folder?

And then you lost me. I totally don't understand what the rest of your message means.

running memtest86 for five hours at least even you are able to run the diagnostic hdd test , you have to go to

Start
Run mmc devmgmt.msc
navigating to Disk Drive opening submenu
there is a code , you have to post it here :confused