KYNelly

I've been having problems with my computer freezing up all the time. My friend who is very computer smart(and lives out of town) redid my computer. He split my drive into 2 drives and when he redid my computer.....I think that he wiped it clean and that he had ghosted my C drive and he said somthing like he didn't need to bother ghosting the D drive. I believe that before he did this he had added a 500something ram card. Anyways...after doing all of this it was still freezing up and we had ran norton, AVG, Registry Mechanic, Spybot, Spy Sweeper, and I keep Ad-watch running........and it still kept freezing. He then told me to try to beef up my power supply box from a 400w to a 450w and I did and it seemed to work ok for a while and then it started freezing up again, but not as bad as before. Then the 450w power supply got fried when we had a storm because I couldn't get it to turn on, so I took it out and put back my 400w power supply and now it freezes up even more. It seems that if I leave it running for a while and come back to it in a couple of hours, I can use it for a while before it will freeze.....sometimes I can use it for days without having to turn it off....but if it freezes and I go to use again right away, it takes just a couple of minutes to freeze up again. Do I need to try a 500w power supply or could one of my drives be going out....cuz I don't think I have a virus.......maybe I just need to get a new computer. Sorry if this doesn't make sense......my knowledge on computers is little, but I did change the power supply all by myself........HURRRAY!!!!!

eramnes

To know if the power supply is the problem, more information about your computer would be helpful. Tell us what processor, video card, and how many installed hard drives/CD or DVD drives, etc. This will allow us to estimate the amount of load there is on the power supply.

Most cheap power supplies will never put out their rated wattage. The cheaper it is, the less likely it is to match the specs on the side. Also, wattage is not nearly as important as the amps per rail. Look on the side of the power supply and tell us how many amps are on each line. There should be info that says something like "12V @ 33A". The 33A is how many amps are on that rail, and is a better method of judging that power supply. There should be lines for 12V, 5V, and 3.3V. Those are the amp values we need.

Also, just out of curiosity, could you count the number of fans in the case and tell us how many fans there are? You might be having an overheating problem as well. If you can monitor your temperatures, that would be helpful too, but not all motherboard/CPU combinations can do this.

You also might have damaged components in the storm. Surges are not good for components. While the computer could still turn on, it would be damaged and could freeze up. Unfortunantly, I can't think of a way to test for this without seeing the computer myself.

KYNelly

On my power supply it says 12v=15a, 5v=35a, 3.3v=28 amp and I saw only 1 fan on it. My computer is an AMD Athlon(tm) Processor, ACPI, 995MHz, with 640 MB of ram( I have 2 cards in there, well had, I just took the 128 one out which is the original to see if that's the problem, and so far since I took it out it hasn't froze up.) I think I'll see if that fixed it and if it didn't then I'll get U the rest of the info on my computer.
I don't think it was the storm because it was freezing up on me before the storm....I think the storm just fried my power supply, hopefully.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for replying back and I'll let you know if it freezes up on me again

Thanks again

Luna

15a at 12v is hardly enough for any system. You might want to look into a better Power Supply in the future.

Good to hear it was the RAM that messed up the system though. It may be that your motherboard does not like that specific brand/type which would cause it to crash.

Supersonic^

Cheap RAM is a common cause of crashes. Usually if they're used on their own, they work fine, but when you try to use them in addition to another brand, then they cause problems. i.e. instantly reboot your PC with no warning kind of problems T_T