aarrrgghhh this pc drives me mad

[squidgey]

hi

can anybody help im not very good with pcs so please try not to be too technical.

my problem is this : a while ago about 6 months ago my partner and i brought a pc in good faith off a friend . when the pc was delivered however it seemed he had taken alot of the bits off our old pc to make up this 'new' pc.

since we have had the 'new' pc it seems to always crash freeze and generally get on my nerves. i dont know much about pc's but i do know the pc was empty of any info when we had it was like a brand new pc .

i have de-fragmented it though and we have norton anti virus running all the time .i have adaware on it which i have ran and removed lots of objects and automatically but them in quarantine 9i basically ran it how the help file said to run it)

on the pc we have windows xp   

AMD Athlon processor  1.4 GHz  

 512 MB RAM    

 local disk capacity 37.2 GB  

 used 6.58 gb  

 free 30 .6 gb

hopefully some one out there will know why the pc keeps crashing and freezing . is it because its a naff pc or does it just need kicking!

thanks merry xmas to every one

[j2buttonsw]

Sounds like a pretty good spec machine. The first thing I would try is reinstalling the operating system (Windows XP). Format the hard drive and do a clean install then service pack 2 it. If this fails then it may well be a hardware fault (anything from bad RAM to a faulty power supply).

[Gandy]

Are you (or the computer) doing anything in particular when it crashes?  Does it display an error message or a blue screen?  I very much doubt that it has anything to do with adware or a virus but more to do with the components inside being installed incorrectly.

[squidgey]

hi thankyou for your answers

i dont get blue screens but occasionally i get error messages and get asked to send a report to microsoft???

i dont know what or how to format anything i usually get others to tinkle with it ... any further advice would be greatly apprieciated thanks

[stevie619]

I think norton is messing up ur computer it did it to mine kick norton and try something else!!!