Computer freezing without warning

[Eep25]

Hey guys, recently my computer has been acting up.

Im not sure exactly when it started, but for the most part i use this computer for gaming and my computer had been freezing when playing certain games like Team Fortress 2 and World of Warcraft.....these freezes however were infrequent, and rarely happened...maybe once every few days...so it didnt bother me. But it seems lately theyve been creeping up more and more. To the point that lets say today for instance, i was freezing after maybe 30-45 minutes of play or so....sometimes it depends.

so i thought maybe it was my drivers...so i got a new driver for my video card, a new sound driver (realtek ac'97) and i even got some update for my processor

After all that....i tried logging in and playing again, and i was freezing after like 10 minutes of play!

Then, on top of that, i got back on and just left my computer on while afk...and it froze on its own! Thats never happened to me before

Im not sure what the issue is. I really need some help though...i really cant afford an entire new computer at the moment.

Heres some specs:
AMD athlon 64x 2 dual core processor (4200+?)
2.23 GHz, 1.00 GB of Ram
Physical Address Extension (?)
ATI Radeon x700 Series Video Card (says PCI slot..)

if you need any other info let me know....i got a dxdiag as well.

Also, in an older thread on this forum dated back to 2006...i saw someone with a similar problem, who was asked to check their event log in the admin tools....Well, every time i freeze there seems to be a similar error that ive copy and pasted.

This is it..

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ati2mtag
Event Category: CRT
Event ID: 45062
Date: 3/12/2008
Time: 11:38:37 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ERIK
Description:
CRT invalid display type
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 01 00 5a 00 ......Z.
0008: 2c 00 00 00 06 b0 00 c0 ,....°.À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

Im guessing its something video related? Im not sure if this error occurred when the CPU froze when i wasnt in game.

Any help appreciated guys!

-eep

[Docktor D]

Hi Eep

Your updated video drivers could have made the problem worse
Have a look at this website
http://www.fixya.com/support/t204658-ati2mtag_causing_crash_ati_vid_card

didiag is a diagnostic program that comes with Direct x used to troubleshoot sound & video problems to run it go to start > run > didiag
If you can swap out the video card, next if you can swap out the ram

How old is your system?
What antivirus do you use?
Post back
Dr.D

[Eep25]

should i follow the steps in that guide in the link you showed me?

also, my computer said there is no such program as 'didiag', and it couldnt run it

lastly, the only other video card i can swap with is one that used to cause even more crashes and errors with this computer. Its kind of a long story. I dont have any ram i can swap out at the moment either, but ive run a mem test and it dosnt appear to be a memory problem.

My system is prolly from around...2004-2005? i want to say. At least, the motherboard and HD/ram/video card are.

I dont use an active anti virus, but im a smart person, and ive never clicked on any bad links or ever had problems that would dictate me having a virus. I do run ad aware and spybot/AVG once in awhile.

[mist-man]

okay I am pretty basically having the same problem. I started noticing this when I was just trying to run games. All games it would freeze, it didnt matter how old the program was... I just could not get it to run. I started running memory tests and it would freeze on those tests. This led me to belive that my memory was bad, but I tried replacing that and its back to the same stuff. I've checked my logs, and the processor doesnt get too hot, so I dont think its those two things.

The problem is that things got worse. I cant even get my computer past the windows splash screen. Reloading windows doesnt do anything either. I came out here today trying to find an answer to this problem because I dont have a computer any more becasue of what ever is causing this.

The only thing that I have that I think it could be is from something that happened a few months ago. I put some memory in my computer and it pretty much exploaded when I turned on the computer. not sure why or what happened, all I know is that I lost half a gig of memory and the DIMM slot is charred. I have two other non-charred DIMM slots, and I wonder if they too got damaged...

[mist-man]

also my anti-virus was a little out of date, but I did run it and it came up clean. this is a freshly-formatted harddrive too

[crunchie]

Hi mist-man.

First of all- welcome to Daniweb :).

We ask that members not piggy-back questions on to a thread previously started by another member here in the Viruses, Spyware & other Nasties forum, (regardless of how similar your problem might seem). Not only does it divert the focus of the thread away from the original poster's problem, but it also makes it less likely that you yourself will get the individual attention that you need.

Please start your own thread and post your question there. When you do, please try to give us as much specific info as possible regarding the problem (exact error messages, system specs, etc.).

For a full description of our posting guidelines and general rules of conduct, please see this page:

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/faq.php?faq=daniweb_policies

Thanks for understanding.