PC Crashes after 20minues of use

[sgd3476]

When kids use any program or game, Dora, sesame st, I Spy, etc. after 20 minues using game, pc crashes. This happens every time, same time. Could this be virus?

Using Windows XP home,
Pc has norton antivirus-personal firewall.

Thanks,
Katie

 

[erikhertzel]

It's possible. You may have a virus (do you have antivirus, or just firewall) or spyware.

Download AVG (

http://www.grisoft.com)

and Microsoft Antispyware (

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx)

and run those and see if this helps.

Erik

 

[aquias]

Start off with following these steps (I believe Home has this, if it doesn't work skip over it).

1. Start
2. Run
3. Eventvwr.msc/hit enter
4. Go through the logs looking for errors with a red X at about the same time you believe the system crashed at.
5. Post it here and we can help you track it down.

In addition to that, I would run a full virus scan. I would recommend that you go to

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Then I would download and install Spybot S&D, as well as the Microsoft antispyware beta and run both of those programs.

As a side note, with both spybot and MS do not blindly remove all entries. Look at what it wants to remove prior to doing so, these are not perfect tools and can remove something that can cause you some minor trouble later on.

 

[sgd3476]

I have Norton Anti-virus too.

Thanks Aquias, I will try that and post later.
Thanks again.
Katie

 

[erikhertzel]

Yes, I agree with aquias, Spybot is good too...

Hope this helps. If not, run Hijack This and post your log here and we will help you get fixed up.

Erik

 

[2ffat]

You may also have a hardware problem. I would suspect something is overheating. Can you open you PC and see if the CPU fan is running? There are some apps floating around that can also tell you if your PC has heat problems. I don't have the links right now.


James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
[sup]To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.[/sup]

 

[trollacious]

I had an "economy" grade computer a few years ago, and the video card on it would cause the computer to freeze - no mouse movement, no keyboard response, nothing. It took hitting the power button to get it started back up. I put a different video card in it, and the crashes stopped. Before I changed the display card, I was experimenting with different settings and set the hardware acceleration to "None", and that helped some. That's how I figured out it was the video card and not something else.

Lee