Computer works in bursts

[LostGeographer]

Ok, my LCD monitor went out like 3 months ago so I have been living off my laptop as I just didn't have the money to replace it. Found an article on it today and replaced two burned out capacitors. It works now but when I turned on the PC for the first time in three months, it is working in bursts.

As it it keeps freezing and unfreezing, unfrozen is about 5 seconds long the freezing is 15-45 seconds a time and it just repeats. Works fine in safe mode so I am guessing it is a software issue. No idea how to approach this other then reformating and there are some things I need on that drive. =\ Any help would be appreciated.

AMD 64 X2 4600+
2GB Ram
x1900

It was working fine three months ago when the monitor went out.

 

[kimsland]

Go back to Safe mode
Run MSCONFIG and select diagnostic startup
Restart

If Windows loads in Normal mode
Then go back to MSCONFIG, and begin to turn one thing on at a time (restart after each) until you find the problem.
Note: You can start a few things at a time, to make it quicker to diagnose

This also may be a video card driver error (which is not run in Safe mode)
Easiest option here is to:
Go to safe mode
Go to System in Control Panel -> Hardware -> Device Manager
And fully remove the Video Driver
You will ofcourse need to reload the correct video driver, in Normal mode again
(just download the new video driver from the manufactures website)

 

[LostGeographer]

Well, I did the video card thing first cause that should have been the easiest thing, and it was working great for about 2 minutes then started doing the freezing thing again, so I went in to safe mode and disabled all the features, then it worked well. But it then started freezing again, now in safe mode too. No idea what I did wrong, guessing it must be hardware now. clueless really, really odd.

 

[kimsland]

In safe mode too.

Well now I think it may be Ram (memory) related
And safe mode wasn't putting as much stress on the Ram to show an innitial freeze up

Best option run Memtest

Tutorial: How to use Memtest

EDIT:
By the way, if you are familiar or experienced with computer hardware
You could remove the internal Ram
Remove all dust (usually just blow out)
Re-insert Ram (they click in, once fully seated)

Then try again

 

[LostGeographer]

Yea, I built it, it did have a lot of dust from where the heat sink had been blowing on the Ram but that didn't fix it (flashed me back to my NES days though) and will try the mem test thing when I am not recovering from surgery. I swear this is the last system I build, I am so sick of having to trouble shoot and paying out of pocket for repairs. Thanks, I am sure I will be back, knowning my luck the mobo, videocard, and cpu all burned out leaving me with good ram that I wont be able to tell is good heh.