Weird noise and freezing

Hello and I will apologize in advance for any mess ups this is my first post. I have recently have been having a problem. I will be browsing the web or playing a game and my computer will make a weird noise and the screen will go black. I have no control and cant do anything and I have to force a restart. I have no idea what is happening please help! I have a Dell inspiron one with a AMD procceser and Ati Graphics card. I'm posting this from a hotel on vacation so I don't have the exact specs right now but thought I would post for some help when I get home.

So for clarification this is about a desktop or laptop? The first thing is an overheating issue that comes to mind first for me for either one. Make sure all intake/exhausts vents are clean along with all fans. Then get some temp monitoring software for cpu, gpu.

the weird noise, is it like a clicking noise? if not can you tell us what it sounds like?
i think whs is right and you should backup the drive asap.


scrooge

Thank you all for the support and yes it is a destop. Now about the ram issue I have 6 G of ram and plenty of memory for my files and applications.I am sorry but I'm not sure how to describe the noise and what application should I get to check my CPU temp. ? And last question, why would my HDD possibly be causing this problem?

this is the one i use.

Download Real Temp 3.60 | techPowerUp

easy to install and works great.
also did you run chkdsk as whs said?
that can help to see if it's the harddrive or not.

scrooge

Thanks Scrooge I will try that out and no I didn't download the HDD thing yet.

I tryed chkdsk but nothing happened. I pulled it up and a black box appered but then it disapered... Also I am home and i woke up to find it had happened again this morning.

Also I downloaded Real Temp but can you tell me how to use it correctly?