i have my comp sitting on a shelf on top of my monitor, the side of the case is off, and i have 2 case fans. Funny thing is that my computer will not stop locking up. It doesnt happen with any certain app or any other thing, just pure random. I have an AMD Duron 750 MHz cpu, xtasy everything 64 mb gforce 2 mx 400 video, and running 384 mb sdram.

rick is right about what is the most likely cause of the lockups ( drivers) with via chipsets I have found the most common source of instability to be problems with the USB drivers. many times people do not even load the drivers which are seperate download and install from the via 4 in 1 drivers.

the very first thing to check is device manager and make sure there are not question marks or triangles with exclamation points in them next to any devices.

Rick,
do you know how long it would take to run this memory test?? It has been running for about 2 hours, and it only has 3 in the pass column right now. Does it go through every megabyte individually?? Also, the website is actually www.memorytest86.com

I do actually remember this started happening after installing a five button mouse made by aopen. To install it, I just popped in the disk that came with it, but then went to the website to get the latest version drivers, but obviously that hasn't changed anything yet. Do you think if I went back to my old optical, that this might just revert itself??

if it is mouse-connected...
read my post about "Jittery Logitech MX700 Mouse".
Connect it to PS/2 if you can. Check out Hardware Wizard as described in above post.
I had similar problems with a MS Intellimouse.
Best of Irish

When you run the memtest86, it's actually good to let it run for a few days. That way all the components ahev the time to get warm ( or even hot ) & you're in real work conditions.

You might get memory errors if your modules tend to overheat for example.

I went through and uninstalled my mouse drivers, and it still works fine, the mouse came with ps/2 connection so I know it isn't a usb problem. The only thing that isn't really working is the special features when clicking the wheel. Used to come up with a window of things you could do like explorer, or close that page, and all kinds of other things. If this solves my problem, I will just live without those things.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions.

I used to have the same problem gfries when i had a Dell. I tried everything to fix it and nothing worked. I clocked in over 24 hours on the phone with tech support. Then they sent me a new machine. Same junk. Thats when i upgraded from Win98 to Win2k Pro. And i never had a problem again. Look into it. I dont know what your running but i hope that helped.

i am running XP SP1, and have changed back to my old optical mouse. This has solved the problem, and it has been lock-free for about a day now, which shatters the other times.

Thanks so much for all of your suggestions, and I will definitely be posting here for a long time. I always get my problems fixed.

Thanks.

Well, to no avail, the problem persists. I have placed a fan next to the computer, and it still locks up. Haven't chacked out the 3rd party software yet, but that is next on my list. Anybody have anything else they might suggest???

Thanks,

See if you can find out the CPU and MoBo temperature in your BIOS.
If not, try a util like MBM5, MotherBoardMonitor 5, details to be found here:
http://www.livewiredev.com/bbs/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=68

It looks to me like your CPU is overheating. Check that the CPU-cooler has not come loose.

well, i tried to find those temps in the bios, but they are not available. I jiggled the cooler on the cpu, but it was tight. does anyone believe that my video card could be the problem?? when my comp does lock up, my vid card is pretty warm, and every once in while the fan puts out a pretty weird noise, but that doesn't happen too often.

the CPU feels cool to the touch, well the heatsink anyways, when it locks up, so i don't believe that it is the problem.

if there is anything else that someone could suggest, please do so, i am at a loss of where to go with this, and need to use my computer for my research.

If you have not tried this yet, switch off the PC and disconnect from the mains. Then remove every card and the memory chips one at the time, clean up their contacts with a rubber/eraser, make sure you blow off all the eraser leftovers and put the cards back in. While you are at it, it may not be a bad idea to use a vacuum cleaner (with a plastic nozzle) to clean up your PC and the fans.
It being open may have collected a lot of dust.
Re-seating your cards/memory may solve your problem.

Also, is your monitor giving up a lot of heat to that PC above it?

Try this system checker, it check all your hardware and system info thx to iss

http://www.aida32.hu/aida-download.php?bit=32

Download either one~ Exe