OK, let me put out as much info as I can. This is quite an old PC (about 4 to 5 years old), but it's the best I have right now before I can get a hold of some serious money to get a new PC.
Pentium 4 1.7 Ghz
Windows XP with SP2
512 MB RAM
GeForce 4000 128 MB Video Card
Maxtor 120 GB Hard Drive
The problem started Sunday evening, January 28. While surfing and watching videos on Youtube, my whole computer froze. When I rebooted it, I found out that when my CPU usage hits a little bit over 100%, the whole system freezes up. Thus, I had to override my antivirus software and such. I tried reformatting the Hard Drive, but it won't even let me reformat the hard drive, or install Windows, since it also freezes up during installation.
I tried to replace the hard drive with two others. Other hard drives respond properly, although one of them reached a critical error (the blue screen), and one hard drive was faulty (when I installed it, it just kept beeping and wasn't detected).
After some time, I was able to reformat the HD and install Windows without it freezing, but when it began to check for updates, it kept freezing so I had to turn updates off (same problem; when CPU usage hits a little over 100, the entire PC freezes).
I want to know if this is just a hard drive issue, or it's something far worse. That way, I know whether I need to completely replaced the PC, or just fix a few items to last it through until I get a new system.
Thanks.
