windows 7 home premium 64 and 32bit crashing randomly

hey all, i really don't know what is going on, i've been running windows 7 32bit no problem for over a year, then randomly it starts to freeze, so i changed my windows theme to classic windows, it ran perfect for about 4 days, then it started throwing up errors for one of my flight sims and refused to run it, so tried to do restores and kept failing, so i gave up and thought "sod it i will back it up and start fresh"

put windows 7 64bit on, ran fine, started doing some windows updates and it started freezing again (i've only installed drivers and updates so far, no a/v, no firewall as it's just music and films on this pc)

i read it might be the ram/memory and the timings, but timings ain't too far out from each other, all four are ddr2 pc2-6400 800mhz.

so when i shut down to check what ram i had, it had 16 updates to do, and it froze on number 3 so pulled the plug (kernel power error 41), rebooted and froze on the log on screen, i've gone onto the event viewer and created a file with the errors on it (tell me how to post the errors to read as 109 errors in viewer)

so yeah, i really don't know what else i can do, it freezes at anytime, during a film, during games, doing nothing, sometimes logging on, once shutting down and a few times during updates.

pc specs

cpu athlon 64 dual core 5200 (2.7ghz) socket am2
ram/memory 4gb 4x1 ddr2 800mhz pc2-6400
m/b abit a-s78h with ati on board (but disabled)
gpu nvidia gt220 pci-e
3x sata hard drives

Welcome to the same problem I have in my own laptop.
Well, I'm using my dad's laptop to write this reply.


It could be anything.
1st thing, do you have any webpages redirecting during online?
No then ask when was the last good working condition?

Use safe mode press F8 during bootup
Search for system restore
See if any of your system restore points r being deleted.
Do not do any system restore yet.

If your PNP is working, pls saved all your important data to anything that you like to use (USB drive, CD,DVD,etc).

That's right! time waster to do backups.

Backups! backups!backups!.That's what I did not do.

it does it even after a clean install during any point, but i was speaking to my mate about this, and he was saying it's something hardware based due to the pc first built about 6 years ago, and the thermal paste on the cpu drying up and just being full of dust

If you answer like this, you are implying that freezing due to overheating of CPU. The only way is to monitor the CPU temperature via resource performance monitor or BIOS setup. Hardware issues can be easily dealt with, software issues are rather difficult.

but i don't see how it will be software if you've just done a fresh install, i've just replaced my heat sync, and got a better ventelated case, but still crashes. im doing a ram test at the min to see if it's that

Sometimes it may the CPU is going to its end. The lifespan of the CPU may be over. I can be certain. My laptop got infected and the virus was stopped. Yeah! stopped not removed,quarantined or isolated. The AV software and anti malware caused my laptop to freezed (not responding every 5 minutes). Great!

Have you checked the MBR or may be the virus if any might reside in the memory area?

im running comodo av, so dunno how to do a mem scan with that
im buying a new mb, cpu and ram wednesday, but i think the hdd could be on it's last legs now (good few years old same as the rest), in the last couple of days, it is staying on, but then giving me a black screen where the hdd has stopped spinning, like you can hear it reading and then suddenly no sound and no image, just fans spinning

If you can I advise you to save your important data files (films, webpages,pdfs, etc) to other media (USB drives, DVDs,etc) before a total failure. My old pc was like that before it died out.Just can't start.

Work through these Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 starting with the hardware tests. Test RAM overnight with memtest, HD diagnostics and Disk Check. Then add Prime 95 to stress test CPU.

i would try and run diagnostics, but i don't even have to log into windows for it to crash, but if it's running in safe mode, it seems to be ok, but all that has been installed since formated, windows updates, graphics card, keyboard/mouse and printer (found it on the network)