Hi, this is getting quite annoying now but every so often my computer freezes (never happened like this before). The way it happens is, 1st the monitor goes black, then it resumes, then it goes black again, then it resumes but everything is frozen and everytime this happens i notice a green block somewhere on the page (approx 2cm high by 4cm long) and i have to reset the computer. The only recent thing that i have done (that i can think of) is disk defragment but i dont really see how this can screw it up, the monitor i have is quite crap but again i dont see how a monitor can freeze your whole computer. I have windows XP (strongly considering switching to linux - if all my games work on it ), any help with wats wrong?

1 more thing, it happened yesterday at 11:59pm (dunno if it matters, just quite spooky - Most Haunted had just started )

Welcome to hell
There might be some problem with your video driver? Have you tried running in safe mode?

yea, forgot to mention that, when i try to run it in safe mode, it loads up all the drivers and stuff (in dos) but doesn't start up, just freezes .

If the green block was 3cm by 4cm I would have known
Sounds like either hardware problems or virus infection.
Check the video driver, the card, are the fans running, is it not overheating, etc etc etc

well i ran a 2 virus scanners McAfee + kaspersky and it came up with nothing, i have also tried it with the LAN cable out (incase of trojan) but it still freezes. will look into updating video driver.

it froze while i was updating driver, when i restarted it, it didn't start straight away, there was about 6-8 bleeps and then 3 bleeps with a little pause in between them. i got it to start though, sort of the old fashioned way .

sounds to me that your computer might be overheating. triggering overhead protection features in your bios.

cleaning out your fan's and such is a logical first step. (might very well be the videocard)

another possible hardware related problem is faulty memory / badsectors on the harddrive. There are tools to check these things.


if it isn't hardware related well since it's windows you'll probably end reinstalling anyway, so you might as well give up on finding the problem already and just insert that windows disc in the drive. (and cross your fingers)



cheers

you can search what those beeps means... in the manual of youre motherboard... (correct me if i am wrong) do you have a medion pc? they hae bad ventilation but i dont think that can couse the 2*3cm... (and i dont know if they have ALDI stores over there)

well i did download "an" update for my video card and i haven't had any trouble recently, not sure what type it is, it was built up and anyways im on holiday....FOR 6 WEEKS

download aida32 then you have a nice overview of what is inside youre system
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html
You can also check out if there is any component not installed (if you have win xp follow my instructions
start => control panel => system => hardware tab => device manager (you can check all hadware components there so you actually dont need aida32)
If you are there then every yellow questionmark is a piece of hardware that win xp doesnt recogneise...

Greets,
Vector

ps: bah still doing exams.... and its 32 degrees celcius outside!