You are about to complete your work but before hitting the save button your computer freezes and nothing else you can do but to reboot and loose your unsaved documentsListed below are common causes of computer freezes and its recommended solution.
RAM (Memory)
- All memory is being used by an application, so it takes time to process succeeding instructions. This is common on low memory system.
- Faulty RAM
- Terminate some of running applications to free some memory.
- Test the RAM, use MEMTEST tool.
- Replacement
Video
- This usually causes freeze when there is a demand of video acceleration such as games, video (movie or editing), or graphics designing.
- Faulty GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) will surely cause freezes. Windows 7 and Broken Video Card is one sample of a broken video card.
- Visual check is needed, check GPU’s capacitors, chips, etc this part get busted over time.
- Update the driver when needed.
- Replacement
Device Drivers (incompatible device driver)
- This is common issue. Especially for GPU drivers and will definitely cause computer freezes when not corrected.
- Outdated drivers. It is known that latest driver may not be the best for you, it depend on your requirements. If your driver is not giving you problem then why update? Updates are needed if you’re installing new application and need feature from latest driver.
- Update Windows XP drivers as much as possible. Manufacturer's support/download site is the best option but if you get tired of searching then use a tool for search, download and install it for you.
- Read driver's release notes before installation.
Bad Motherboard
- Motherboard is considered one of the last parts of a computer to be replaced because replacing it is like buying new unit.
- When you start encountering problem to your computer and you’ve isolated that none of your peripherals is causing it then it the time to consider the motherboard. Visual inspection is needed. Check bloated capacitors and chips or see if the whole board is bent which usually happen on old computers.
- Send it to repair shop for troubleshooting.
- Replacement.
Hard drive (HDD)
- When you start experiencing slow access to your files, slow boot and freezes.
- Knocking sounds from inside the computer.
- Perform scandisk (chkdsk /r /f) to recover files on bad sectors.
- Perform disk clean up to delete temporary and unwanted files.
- Perform disk defragmentation.
- Replacement
Software
- Software conflict such as antivirus, firewall, anti-malware, and other tools.
Recommended solution:
- Uninstallation of latest software installation.
- Updating the software.
- Uninstallation of unnecessary application.
Windows Registry
- As being the database of all setup and configuration of windows machine when messed up will give unwanted result.
Recommended solution
- Keep it clean, use registry cleaning tool. I use ccleaner for that which is impressive and most of all free!
