Trouble shooting help needed, PC locking up randomly

[MaddHawk]

As stated I need some trouble shooting help. This PC that I am making this post on, locks up randomly. I will be in the middle of a task or someone else, usually my mother, will be in the middle of a task and the PC will just straight up freeze. The keyboard stops responding, the mouse stops responding, and no amount of stimulus or waiting will resolve the issue. The only thing I can do once it locks up is a hard reboot of the system.

Symptoms noted:
-Sound goes to squeeks, squeels, stuttering, or looped playback of what was playing last
-moniter freezes showing whatever was up on the screen at time of freeze
-no warning boxes, no BSOD, and upon reboot no indication of a problem
-system stability does seem to increase as the system warms up, but this being an old Athlon XP CPU running at 1.25 GHz, it doesn't get too hot and it is winter time here in North-Central Cali (edit: I state this as well since I have heard that AMD CPUs don't like the cold too much)

Recent changes made to system:
-replaced PSU from generic case PSU to Thermaltake 480W Butterfly Purepower
-upgraded ram to 1 gig Patriot PC-3200
-upgraded video card from nVidia Geforce Ti4400 128mb to ATI Radeon 9800 256mb
-upgraded sound from mobo sound to Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS Platinum Pro
-uninstalled ATI drivers and downloaded and installed newest drivers from ATI's website
-used drivers from Creative Labs website for sound card install
-made sure all the latest patches and updates, critical, noncritical, and hardware, were downloaded and installed.

[MaddHawk]

Posting an update just incase anyone else happened to read my original problem and found it interesting despite the lack of responses.

I made a thread on here asking people what disk defragmentation software was better than the one Microsoft supplies with its OSes. I decided to use Auslogics Disk Defragmenter as it seemed to be the most recommended and was free to boot. While I was looking at the Auslogics website and finding the defragmenter to download, I saw that also offered for free was Auslogics Registry Defragmenter.

I downloaded both pieces of software. I installed the disk defragmenter first followed by the registry defragmenter. I then ran the disk defragmenter with only one pc freeze during the process and followed with the registry deframenter aftwards. The reg defrag scheduled itself to run after the next reboot when I started it and then asked if I wanted to reboot. I said yes and the machine rebooted. When it finished POSTing it fired up the registry defragmenter and ran itself. Once complete it rebooted the machine again. The machine proceeded to startup until it reached the login screen. As soon as it reached the login screen the machine rebooted again. It proceeded to repeat this reboot cycle indefinitly until I just shut it down.

At this point I declared the OS on the HDD to be FUBAR :mad:. I then went and grabbed my old 80GB PATA HDD, which was installed in an external HDD enclosure with USB 2.0 connection, and finally backed off the information I wanted from it to CD. I then formatted my own HDD using the NTFS system. I then pulled my mother's pc apart and dismantled it completely. I removed the mobo in order to remove the CPU heatsink and CPU. Used some Articlean to remove the old thermal compound and put some new Artic Silver 5 on it. Cleaned the old case thoroughly with extensive application of an industrial vacuum. I installed all the hardware back into the case and removed my now blank HDD from its external USB enclosure and installed it in place of my mother's HDD. I did a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. Downloaded all the updates, downloaded all the hardware drivers, and kept checking Windows Update until there was nothing left.

I then went back to Auslogics and decided to give the disk defragmenter another go. My thinking was, perhaps the Auslogics software is good software and it was just the already present instabilities in the old OS install that was just on its last legs and finally gave up. I did NOT download the registry defragmenter. Now I have the PC up and running quite smoothly on the new HDD. I also run the disk defrag after every software install and after every update proceeding the installs.

I took my mother's old HDD and installed it into my external USB enclosure for retrieval of key documents and program settings. My plan is, once the new apps are installed and configured using settings from the old HDD, is to wipe it clean and leave it installed to my mother's PC as a USB based backup for her critical information. :)

So far its all been a huge PITA but, the payoff will be a much more stable system for my mother. It also might be a bit premature but, it seems that the system lockup issue was associated with the old OS install as it has yet to present itself in the new build. :up: