ok this is driving me crazy

my machine is acting weird. usually when i open internet explorer or wmp10. the whole computer just hangs, the mouse freezes, nothing. then, about 30 secs later i hear what i imagine is the hard drives kick in, like that whirr they make, and all the applications that ive been clicking frantically all appear and everythings normal again. sometimes when this freeze occurs it never wakes up and I have to reboot
ive tried multiple virus scan, reg cleanerrs, spyware scans. ive defragged, cpu temp is always under 50,.

my speca are
amd athlon 3200+
2 gs ram
ati 800x video card

i think thats all the info whoever can kindly help me needs

 

Hi,
Try this and see if it helps. Go into display properties, screensaver tab, click power management button and make sure that "turn off hard disks" is set to the "never" option. if that does not help, pop the side cover and check your power and interface connections to the HD.

 

thanks for the advice so far guys. no programs listed are taking up more than normal ram and the hard drives were set to never. also all cables are intact. could this be a failing PSU? if so how do i check that? is there a utility for it

 

I forgot to mention that there also may be a setting to spin down the drives in your BIOS. You may want to check that too. I don't know of any software diagnostics for power supplies.

 

hmmm thanks but 'spin down the drives'? i dont know what that means but ill look around to see if i can see that option