Question about a home built PC

[comptonassneil]

I've had a few problems with my newly built PC. Most of them i've ignored but its starting to get worse. At first anytime i'd move my PC from my house to a friends house, it would blue screen of death me. Finally, after i stopped moving it, it stopped. Now, it's doing this thing where it'll freeze up, or the start menu will dissapear if i leave my computer idle for too long, yet the mouse will still move. Ive had a few instances where its turned on and said cannot load OS or something, or Boot Disk Error, or whatever it is. But i just checked the connections to the hdd and restarted and it came back. Do i just need a fresh reformat? Maybe my dvd-rom is going bad and its not installing everything it needs to? If you have any advice it would be much appreciated.

 

[huron]

Specs please. We'll be able to help more if we know what you've got.

 

[comptonassneil]

Q6600 Processor
Asus P5N-E motherboard
GeForce 9600GT
Windows XP
500GB HDD
GSkill 4gb RAM
600Watt SLI ready power supply

 

[frozenlead]

I would run a battery of tests on the unit, starting with some hard disk diagnostics and then running memtest. You can find them both in one place here:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

[huron]

Agreed frozenlead.

It could be a number of things, and the UBCD is a great resource.

I would check the HDD - there are plenty of free HDD diagnostics that utilize SMART technology.

Good luck

 

[Shadow703793]

+1 for UBCD. Can't live with out it!

Problem looks like HDD, or RAM. PSU could also be one. I'v seen PSUs causing some weird problems, but tbh this doesn't look like a PSU but still possible.

 

[comptonassneil]

i've never used this utility before.. Do I just burn it to a CD, and boot from CD? also, I could only find the beta for v5.0, will this be okay to use?

 

[huron]

Yep...you download the .iso, and use a program like imgburn to burn it to a CD and use it as a boot disk.