I have a random hang up problem. Whenever I turn the computer off for hours (like overnight) and I try to start it, it freezes either a) while windows is booting up b) on the XP account screen or c) within minutes of reaching my desktop. This can happen 5 times in a row and I have to force restart many times before it will run without freezing. Once running, it will run for hours and won't freeze again. Sometimes instead of freezing, I get a blue screen of death telling me that newly installed drivers are causing an instability and it performs a physical memory dump. WTF??!! Is my HD shot? Its like 4-5 years old. I just bought an external drive and I was planning to use something to dupe my current drive and boot from the new drive to see if it still hangs. Could this be caused by overheating? I don't have a case fan. Or could it really be a driver issue? I am probably going to reformat my HD and see if it still hangs. Am I going in the right direction? WTF IS GOING ON???!!! Thanks!
Reformatting your hard drive is a start -- this will say whether it's just a driver issue, or an XP fluke, or if it truly is your hard drive going bad or your case overheating.
99% likely windows fluke. Format and reinstall, or even just try to reinstall without the format (though I usually hate the mess that leaves). Sounds like you have some drivers either conflicting or doing something incorrectly.
