[Kayne]

my computer recently stops responding and working again randomly, and i dont have any idea why. it just stops responding every 5-30 seconds and wont respond back for about 5-10 seconds, usually when i typ or click something.(you wouldnt believe what it took to write this message) it seems to do it in my web browser(mozilla) and windows explorer mostly(pretty much the only things i use tho). it had strted doing this before but it was manageable i could usually wait it out and it would be fine, but when i restarted it would sometimes not boot, it would stop booting whenever it started booting the drives if im not mistaken. which i might be. system is 2.5 yrs old, used for 1.5 yrs, clean wiped a couple days ago, home-built, all brand name parts, never any previous problems.

Vista Ultimate 64-bit

im thinking hardware failure but i dont know what
cpu hovers between 0-15% up to 40% during freezes
Ram ~1.1 of 2
disk spikes quite a bit(usually during freezes) but thats normal isnt it?
network is fine

i have a spare HDD i can try but thats it... and i dont want to try that until a last resort it would take forevor to backup my data at this rate

dont know what else to tell so ill post this and hope for the best

[etaf]

have you tried a virus / spyware scan - i would suggest you do that

CPU at 40%
perhaps a hardware is calling an interupt

have a look at device mangager for any ! ?

also look at startups in msconfig , and turn them off - perhaps its a memory and swapping issue
whats you memory usage in task manger

i'm assumong a level of knowledge - so please post back anything tou dont understand

[Kayne]

1. i shouldn't need a virus/spyware scan i just did a clean reinstall a couple days ago. and ive been on only trusted sites.

2. don't know what 'calling an interrupt' means or how to check exactly.

3. i didn't see any !'s or ?'s

4. same if not less startups than when my computer DID work.

and my computer is working fine now since i left it off for awhile(just now booted it up) but last time it only worked fine for a couple hours then started to start and stop so the problem probably isnt fixed

i did try opening my case to make sure it wasn't a temperature problem(since it didnt start until later) but my fans all seem to be working fine.

[Rich-M]

It's either incompatible ram or a "tired" hard drive. I would run memtest86 for 3-4 hours to check the ram and if no errors then try a different hard drive.
www.memtest86.org

[Kayne]

I tried memtest and got no errors, then it started acting up again, turned off for a while and it worked fine when i booted back up, i am currently trying the new hard drive, ill update and set this topic as solved if it keeps working for a couple days without having to reboot, thanks for all the help if it did fix it...

[Kayne]

didnt work with the new hard drive but found out it was the RAM installed new ram and no hang-ups since. thanks for all the help