systems freezes -- may need hardware diagnostic program?

Thanks in advance for your help!

I have a secondary laptop (P3 [yeah, it's old] running Windows 2003 Server Standard [as a test] with all the latest updates, 1GB RAM) that has started to occasionally lock-up on me.

It will start-up, work fine for a while, than BAM...completely frozen! This has occurred with both few apps/browser windows open and with multiple apps/browser windows open. The last time it happened, I had to unplug the power cord to shut-down.

I removed the hard-drive and placed it into a different (but same model) laptop and no problems that I've come across so far.

For the moment, I'm going to rule out:
-- software conflicts, as I haven't installed/uninstalled anything recently before it started to act up,
-- malware, as it was recently scanned and nothing came up.

Is there a good, simple to use and understand (and hopefully free) application that will monitor computer components? Perhaps it's a hardware diagnostic program that may be what I'm looking for?

I'd like to be able to determine what, if any, hardware might be causing my computer to freeze. Whether it might be a RAM issue or if the problem might be something on the motherboard itself or other.

I think the fan itself on the secondary laptop might be going and may be causing the computer to overheat and freeze-up. The last time it locked up, the fan (???) seemed to try and "engage" but only alternated between whirring and stopping.

I'd also like to be able to check the health of a hard-drive to get advance warning if/when it might fail -- how much more "life" I can get out of it before replacing it.


MODS:
I initially placed this in software (for the diagnostic/monitoring program request), but if it needs to be moved to another forum (for example, hardware), please do so.

 

You could try this:

http://majorgeeks.com/download181.html


Good luck!