So I went to the Computer Viruses And Spyware section, hoping to fix this problem. It still hasn't been fixed, so I hope someone here can help me. Here is the updated copy & pasted summary of my problems from the
Viruses And Spyware forumAlmost a week ago I was playing a full-screen online game (MapleStory to be exact;
http://mapleglobal.com) and suddenly the game, along with the computer, just completely froze.
I couln't alt-tab out of the game, ctrl-alt-delete did not work either, so I had to reset my computer. I tried getting in-game again, and about 10-20 seconds after getting in-game, it freezes again.
Almost immediately after the problem began with the game, my PC began to become unstable. While I'm browsing the internet or even through my folders, one of the fans in my laptop would start to hum, and about 5 seconds later the computer would freeze, 3-5 seconds later the monitor would black out and 1 second after that, the screen would return to normal and everything would be unfrozen. The humming noise that comes before is the tell-tale sign that this will happen. Also it is not a fan I usually hear running; it sounds "smooth" when it runs, and I only hear that fan run when I'm playing full-screen games or games that take up alot of memory, like TankBall (which I will cover later), or even just programs in general that take up alot of memory.
Also, sometimes the monitor will keep blacking out at random times WITHOUT freezing, usually just once or twice in a row, but sometimes it would keep blacking out every 2 seconds. The thing is, unlike the problem stated about the monitor blacking out in your official Windows XP faq, and I quote: "The screen blacks out every few seconds, though the Windows seems to be operating underneath", in my case you cannot see Windows operating underneath. The way my monitor blacks out is like how the screen blacks out when you change the resolution of your monitor. Also, after the 5th-6th consecutive blackout, for the 1 second I can see my screen, all the windows that are opened look messed up, as if I changed the resolution to a much smaller one.
Also, the total freezing of my system is not isolated to just that one full-screen online game: I tried playing a flash game called TankBall 2 (
http://maidmarian.com/tank.htm) and I put it in "full-screen" (That is, I opened up the game in IE6 and pressed F11 to put the browser in full-screen; the game takes up the entire screen) then about 10 seconds later after getting in-game, the computer freezes the same way it froze in MapleStory. I also tried not making IE6 full-screen while playing the game, and yet it still freezes. Sometimes the computer just freezes on its own, regardless of what I'm doing.
I tried watching a video using RealPlayer, and I couldn't watch it; the picture was all blurry. I'm not sure if this is related to the problem, because I haven't used RealPlayer or any other video player on my PC for a few weeks.
I have done the following in order from 1st to last:
1. Scanned for viruses/spyware using ZoneAlarm Security Suite
2. Ran Norton Systemworks Premier's One Button Checkup
3. Used Registry Mechanic 7 to diagnose and repair any registry files
4. After all of these attempts to fix the problem failed, I used Norton Ghost to restore my system to its state back in November 2006. Alot of my installed programs changed from Nov 2006 to Apr 2008 (And I mean alot), and I was hoping that this would be the fix, but alas, it wasn't. The problem persisted even in this reverted state.
5. At this point, I went to the Computer Viruses And Spyware section of ComputerHope and we tried to fix the problem. It didn't work. Details of this can be found here: http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,55545.0.htmlHere are my PC's specs: