Is my system standing on its last leg?

Hi, recently I have been experiencing system shutdowns and hang times. This would happen after a different events. Before I tell you exactly what happened, this is what my system is:

OS: WinXP Pro w/SP1
CPU: AMD AthlonXP 2800+
MEM: 1024 MB DDR SDRAM
MB: MSI KT4V
VID: Radeon 9550 (256MB)
HD1: WD 80GB (2 partitions)
HD2: Maxtor 120GB (2 partitions)
OD1: Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-105
OD2: Plextor CD-R PX-W2410A

I had this system for a while, and it has been running flawlessly until recently.
These events occurred at different times.

Event 1:
I was playing Call of Duty 2 online. After I exited the game everything froze. It took about 5 minutes before I could move my mouse. (this never happened before after COD2)

Event 2:
Same as the Event 1, except everything froze after I tried loading winamp 2.91

Event 3:
I tried restarting a computer right after event 2, and I received an error that a windows file was missing, unfortunately I did not write it down. So I reset the computer and loaded just fine.

Event 4:
While running only MSN messenger and a MS Outlook, the system just shutdown.
Tried restarting a computer but it would not load. After resetting it would just not run on. There absolutely no power. I tried several times without any luck. After I opened the cover and wiggled some cords and blew some dust off it started.

Also, during some of these events the little red status light would stay on. Addiitonally, I could hear my hard drives making a lot of noise. It sounded like it was struggling to read the data.

Right now the machine is running smoothly, and I just backed up all my data.

Any idea what is happening here?

 

Random system shutdowns and lockups are usually due to either over-heating or the power supply starting to fail.

Check that all the internal fans are running correctly especially the CPU fan and clean out the dust bunnies.

If you have a voltmeter it is possible to check the outputs from the power supply.

As for noisy hard drives - that is not the best thing in the world to hear and I'm glad you've had the sense to back up your data. If you know what make of hard drive you have most of the major manufacturers have downloadable diagnostics at their websites so I would suggest you try that.

 

Thanks for that response.
It was my initial reaction, that the power supply might be giving up on me.
I had a similar issue with my video editing PC, where the power just died. But as you can see on this one, it happens randomly.