Hello,

I have had my new computer for about six months now. When I bought it I installed an ATI Radeon X1650 PRO graphics card which is very impressive. I also placed an extra hard drive from my old computer (80 GB) into the new one. The new computer is has a 3.2 GB dual core pentium processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 300 GB hard drive. I use it with an LCD monitor that I got with the computer. My computer has worked fine with absolutely no problems for the last six months, I mainly use it for word processing, surfing the net and playing Lord of the Rings Online. But after Xmas I have suddenly started having problems which are;

1) After start-up the screen sometimes freezes and all I can do is restart it via the PC.

2) After start-up I lose the signal to my monitor and again all I can do is restart.

This problem started happening just once or twice and then the computer worked with no problems. Now it is happening more frequently but after constant restarts it does eventually work again until I come to use it the next time? Also during these problems the PC has power to it and the lights remain on as does the fan etc. They normally only happen once I have logged onto Windows XP and open a program.

Could it be a problem with lack of power? Should I remove the hard drive I added as I don't really need it in there?
Or could the monitor be failing even though it's new? :(

I realise there are a number of things I can check like the battery on the mother board, cleanliness of cooler and that the graphics card and RAM are seated properly. But what I don't understand is after 4 or 5 reboots it eventually works fine for the entire day until I power down?? :rolleyes:

Any suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance :)

Update.

I have given up trying to fix this myself and taken it to a computer technician to sort out. So far they have had it for about a week and run numerous tests on all of the hardware. The results are that all the hardware is fine with no problems, they even swapped the graphics cards to other ones just to make sure and the screen still froze. Subsequently they have formatted the system and reinstalled Windows XP, yet the problem still persists. They are running out of ideas and believe there is some kind of software issue. The next step is that they are going to try another XP disc just in case there is a fault on mine.

Sadly I do not hold out much hope now and am gutted at the thought of having to give up on my computer and face the expensive prospect of buying another!! Any ideas on what's wrong or successful remedies to similar problems are most welcome.