subject: Why Is Your Computer Freezing Up? [print this page] Computers are wonderful tools when they work properly but can quickly become a source of frustration when they aren't. You're in the middle of a heated battle in an online game and then it locks up, leaving you staring at a frozen screen, or you just got about 2/3 of the way through that term paper, and now you're stopped dead in your tracks. Sound familiar? The reasons for a computer freezing up are wide and varied but here are the three most common:
Impending Hard Drive Failure
When I worked as a desktop support technician, one of the most common things I saw was that the fan unit which keeps the system cool stopped working. This causes the unit to get hot and thus the hard drive to over heat. Once this occurs, lock ups and freezes happen with greater frequency. A way to check for this is to place your hand on the CPU at the back and check to see if you feel air flow from the fan, if not, make sure you back up all of your data as quickly as possible and look at getting the fan unit replaced. Sometimes the hard drive will return to normal operation once the fan unit is replaced, but more often than not, hard drive failure is not far behind.
Driver Conflict or Incompatibility
If your computer freezing up coincides with a new install of software or hardware, quite often a driver is the culprit. With all of the windows compatible software out there, there's no possible way to test it in all scenarios. If you have found this to be the case, contact the vendor for support, there may be known issues with your particular set up.
Registry
Lastly, the most common reason for a computer freezing up is registry entries that are no longer useful but remain behind. Many programs although uninstalled, leave entries in the registry that can cause the computer to display many errors and cause poor system performance. The programs that are most notorious for this behavior are spyware, adware or viruses.
