Hi all,

I just reinstalled a PC for a client. He originally bought it through me about 5 years ago, Windows XP SP2, nothing special about it.
Windows had become very sluggish and he'd had some IE adware which never really seemed to go away even I'd cleaned it out using the normal anti spy/malware softwares.

So I took it away and reinstalled XP, this time with SP3. We agreed it would be a logical time to install a new HDD, given that it's been used every working day for 5 years.
I delivered it on tuesday morning.
Now, however, it freezes. 3 or 4 times during each working day.
I have it back in my home office for testing this weekend, but am rather stuck for inspiration.

He says it's after he's been away from it, for a phone call or a meeting. Mouse frozen, hard reset required. In continuous use it doesn't miss a beat.
This is rather to diagnose.....the CPU fan is working normally.
I did of course clean out an obscene quantity of dust from inside the box after 5 years of its being on the floor.
But I didn't have any compressed air left, so I used a straw and some deep breaths. While it was off, obviously. One of the filthiest I've ever seen but weirdly the CPU heatsink wasn't completely blocked.

Any thoughts, suggestions, commiserations?
Their logic seems to be "it was working although slow until you "fixed" it. So fix it properly.

Thanks all,
Diz

Could it be something to do with energy saving prefs?
If it's fine when in continuous use but freezes up when it's idle for a bit it suggests something is being shut down and isn't playing nicely when asked to wake up again.

The only time I saw a machine fail after walking away was when I had some sort of conflict with two drives installed - never understood why.

I agree with Davros, it sounds like some power saving which isn't working properly. There's quite a few things that can go to sleep. First off, check all the motherboard drivers are up to date and then disable power saving on the network, screen, disks and everything else you can find.

Hibernate mode borked?

Hard drive trying to power down?

I would disable hibernate mode and also check/change hard drive power setting so "turn off hard disk" is set to "never"