I am as of late experiencing a strange freeze in my computer, where it goes unresponsive and then refuses to boot for several minutes after I restart. The problem first occurred when a friend of mine installed 3D Mark 05, and RadLinker, in hopes of upping my score. After finding a "stable" level he proceeded to play Knights of the Old Republic, showing me the improvement, the game ran fine for about 10 mins then the computer froze. That being the first time the computer froze I removed RadLinker.
The problem still remains, I originally thought it was connected to the Video card, but have swapped out the card and used other cards after the system froze and discovered that it still refuses to load. Its not related to the game, as the computer has frozen up just opening a web browser, the strangest part is that there seems no reason for the freeze up. It has happened just loading into windows.
My rig is a Giga-Byte: GA-K8VNXP w/VIA K8T800 chipset, AMD 64 3000+ Athlon, 1-gig DDR 400, Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro with 256mb DDR, Belkin wireless card, SoundBlaster audigy platinum, Sony CDRW, Creative CD-Rom, Zip Drive, Floppy, and two hdd, 1x80gig and 1x10gig, Powered by a 500watt power source, Running windows XP Pro.
Please note the only changes to the system since this has started happening have been the regular security updates from Microsoft, and the average temperature in the room has gone up but the CPU remains between 30c and 40c at all times, with no discernable heat from the system except off the video card and a chip on the board located directly bellow the AGP port (which has since been covered with a heat sink, and produces considerably less heat. (you can see a picture of the board here, and the chip I covered.
http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Products/Products_GA-K8VNXP.htm# )
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
