computer randomly freezes

[derin11]

Recently, my computer started freezing randomly... The mouse and keyboard lock up and if there's any music playing or sound, it just keeps repeating over and over until I turn it off from the power supply. Once it's off, it never starts up again right away. I have to turn off the monitor, then turn on the power supply, then press the power button, then turn off the power supply and the monitor, then turn it on again...like ten times every time it freezes. Sometimes the computer will turn on just after I turn on the power supply without me pressing the button on the front of the case. When that happens, the computer usually starts up fine. I have no idea what the problem could be, so any insights would be welcome.

[GSXdan]

its possible it is overheating. how many fans do you have inside the case? have you looked at what temp your system is operating at? give some specs on your pc and what type of applications/games you are running.

^dan

[derin11]

This is what I have currently:
Abit KG7
Athlon XP 1900+
Alpha PAL 8045
Hollywood Plus DVD decoder
3COM Ethernet Card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
PNY Verto GeForce 3
Zip drive
western digital 80gb hard drive
Floppy
Plextor 24x/10x/40x burner
2 256MB 184-pin ddr ram
Panasonic DVD player
Windows XP Pro

-There are two temperature sensors, one is reading 52C, the other 41C, but I don't know what they represent.

-The computer has been working perfectly for the last six months, but the IBM hard drive I had crashed. I replaced the hard drive with a western digital one.

-I installed windows 2000 first on this new hard drive, and it worked fine for a week, but after installing software, the computer would freeze whenever i tried to shut it down

- after upgrading to windows xp, it was working until a couple weeks ago

- when I try to restart the computer, whether from windows, bios, or the case switch, the computer starts and everything, but it doesn't display anything to the monitor. Only after playing with the power supply (i think it's 400 watts) does it work.

- earlier today I took out a firewire card and tv tuner card because I thought they were overworking the power supply or something, but apparently not, because it still crashes.

- it seems like it crashes whenever i'm trying to do a few things at once, like downloading something and playing mp3s, or playing a game and doing something else.

[lil Jimmie]

May be a bad stick of ram, take one of the sticks of ram out and see if it continues to crash then try the other stick.