Computer Problems

Alright, so it hasn't exactly been a perfect year for my computer. After excessively cleaning it out last night, even cleaning all the dirt off of the processor, and its massive cooling fan, I am still having problems. So basically my computer will be on for 5 minutes, then the screen will flash black, then normal, and continue to do this. After it finishes going black it pretty much freezes what ever is on my screen atm to that, and I can't really do anything about it. to me it sounds like a video card problem, and it feels like its giving off a lot of heat. I am hopefully getting it checked by my moms co-worker who does all the computer stuff at her work to look at it in the next week or two. Don't expect me to be on in the near future. I will only be on the forums, and most likely MSN because this terrible laptop can't run steam its so old. So I won't be in game for a while, nor on steam.

The problem does not necessarily have to be your hard components. It is very likely that you are experiencing OS or driver problems. I recommend you back up precious files on an external, then reformat, and reinstall your OS. Then get your drivers up and running. And if this does not fix your problem, well, that is alright because doing what I suggest is a very healthy practice when it comes to computers.

Well, the thing is I am having it looked at / hopefully fixed in the next month or less, so it may be what you are suggesting. I will find out when I get a diagnosis from my moms friend.

To be sure if its a video card problem what you could do when it happens is try to access your computer via a network connection. Setup a shared folder first that you can access via your laptop or simply write down the IP address of you computer and try to ping that from your laptop. If your computer freezes and you can still ping it/access it then you are sure it's a video card problem because it means your OS has not frozen.

Did you make any changes (installed software/windows update) before this started happening?

See thats the problem. It only likes to happen to me, or my brother. My other brother can be on for a while and nothing. Usually I go on Google Chrome, or Firefox, and MSN. same thing with my brother. My comp is really messed up. Anyways, no major program changes recently to cause this.

I also see this as a good thing because my parents are finally considering buy a new PC. The ones we looked at are quad core, 4 gigs ram, 1 tb hard drive, awesome mother board, for 300$. I am just hoping I can get a new PC. This 6 year old PC has been a pain the last while.

I don't see how you're getting a quad core, 4 gigs of ram, a 1 tb hard drive, and an awesome motherboard for 300 dollars. Unless it's got integrated graphics, it's an athlon2 x4 with 4 gigs of bad DDR2 ram, and a 5200 rpm HDD.

Well, the rest we already have, I will give you a link, here

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6346490&Sku=B69-0215

Sure I need new OS, but hey, I don't mind

Damn that is cheap for such a config.

I know. Canada is awesome!

Man, computer parts got cheaper again.

Yeah. Before, this would have costed 500$ easily, now its 300$