PC booting problems

[Baron1]

I am worried about my PC, recently it had suddenly rebooted by itself while I was working and kept freezing as the desktop appeared on my screen. I had to keep turning it on and off until it would finally boot properly. I did a full system scan through Avira anti-virus and found this result shown twice and identified as a trojan - C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\kernel32.dll. So I sent the result to Avira's official lab via email but they replied but telling me the result was proven to be a false positive and was harmless.

Could it be something else affecting else causing this damage I.e. unidentified trojan horse?

System:
HP Pavilion 523a
Windows XP Professional
Version 2002
Service Pack 2

Intel(R)
Celeron(R) CPU 1.80GHz 1.79GHz
512 MB of RAM

PC is about six years old.

 

[Tmagic650]

You have Symantec, Advir and Avast all on your system. Get rid of anything Symantec and choose between the antivirus programs, and pick only one to use. You are running IE6 and XP Service Pack 2. This tells us that you need many Microsoft Updates applied to make your PC more secure. Service Pack 3 and IE8 are available. Run Windows Update from the All Programs list and choose Custom. Download all checked updates including all hardware and optional updates

 

[raybay]

I second what Tmagic650 suggests... important.

But your battle is with a number of problems. A very old computer with limited memory. How old is the hard drive? If it is as old as the computer, you are likely having drive problems that will worsen rapidly. Six years is a long time for any brand and model.
Another problem is that you likely do not have enough memory. Some of your memory is taken to run the video graphics. You do not have adequate memory to run all the updates well when downloaded. When that computer was new, 256MB of memory was adequate... now I doubt that 512MB is enough to do well what you are trying to accomplish.

 

[Tmagic650]

That is true raybay, a more modern, bigger hard drive could help with virtual memory allocation and I do think 512MB is the max memory for this model. It might be 1GB though

 

[Baron1]

Firstly, thanks for all the helpful responses everybody, as it has given me a clear idea to what to do.

And yes raybay, I'm afraid the hard drive is as old as the PC. And admittedly because of its age, I'm wondering it's even worth the hassle trying to restore everything in order.

 

[Tmagic650]

Hard drives are not expensive these days. Investing in a new IDE drive may let you hang on to your beloved computer a bit longer

 

[Bobbye]

I am worried about my PC, recently it had suddenly rebooted by itself while I was working and kept freezing as the desktop appeared on my screen.

Could be a system problem:

Start> Run> type in eventvwr

Do this on each the System and the Applications logs:

• 
  [1]. Click to open the log>
  [2]. Look for the Error>
  [3] .Right click on the Error> Properties>
  [4]. Click on Copy button, top right, below the down arrow >
  [5]. Paste here (Ctrl V)
  [6].NOTES
• You can ignore Warnings and Information Events.
• If you have a recurring Error with same ID#, same Source and same Description, only one copy is needed.
• You don't need to include the lines of code in the box below the Description, if any.
• Please do not copy the entire Event log.

Errors are time coded. Check the computer clock on freeze.

Maybe someone will come along and mention the possibility of your having BitTorrent and Limewire as potential problems.