Alright, first off, don't tell me to get a Mac. It's already a consideration. But right now, I'm hoping to find a solution that doesn't involve spending hundreds of dollars.

Alright, so here's the deal. Last December, as some of you know, I got the addictiveness that is the glorified chat program that is Second Life. I had technical issues with it: my computer kept locking up. I had 512MB memory at the time. I upgraded to 1Gig. Would've been more, but apparently Crucial.com recommended a card that wasn't compatible with the one I already had. Whatever, solved the problem. At least at first.

Apparently one of SL's quirks is its habit of crashing. It wasn't so bad at first. When SL crashes, it normally automatically exits the program and sends a crash report to Linden Labs. But eventually they had a mandatory update to their new Windlight engine. At the time, I had an ATI Radeon 9550. It doesn't work well with Windlight. Not only did SL start crashing more often for me, but it resulted in a graphical corruption when a certain option was selected (more often in a graphically intense area):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/ ... es_001.jpg
(In case it's not obvious, a whole bunch of jagged texture meshes are shooting across the screen, and it ranges from minor to screen-filling.)

Simple solution was to turn off that option, but it resulted in a hurt framerate, and it didn't help the crashes. My next option was to get a new graphics card. My computer as old as it is, the best option I could get was a GeForce 6600. Went with GeForce because they're supposed to work better with SL.

Well, two days before the card came in, my problems with SL suddenly got worse. It was back to the issue I had before my memory got upgraded: my system locked up. Specifically, my mouse and keyboard still work, the start menu still works. But that's it. Nothing runs, and Ctrl Alt Del fails to do anything. And it happened a lot. Strangely, the next day, I had no problems at all. The day after, my card came in, and I got it installed. Well, I still had the problem. Just not as often. I decided to just tolerate it.

It's gotten worse again. Now, before you say "don't play Second Life" (yeah, you. I know you already have it typed out in a separate window ahead of time), it isn't Second Life. (And if any of you turn this into an SL discussion, I'll have to request your posts get removed.) When I say the problem's gotten worse, I mean it's gotten worse. It's begun to happen outside of SL. Just last week, I was out of the room playing video games, and my computer had nothing big running; just Firefox sitting minimized in the hidden taskbar. I come back to find that it had apparently locked up. Earlier today, I locked up. And there's plenty of other instances of locking up when nothing big is running, and it seems that it's happening with more frequency.

On top of that, for the past couple months, Windows XP has had some security updates to install. No matter what I do, they won't install. I've tried reinstalling XP. That not only didn't work, but now it won't install back to the SP3 upgrade. I've tried reinstalling my graphics driver. That didn't work. I use "Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition" as my virus detection. In the three years I've owned this computer, it has never detected a virus, and I personally update it regularly.

I'm currently suspicious of my hard drive. I need some way to test whether it's the problem, without having to spend money on a new hard drive or re-format my current one in the chance that it fixes my problems. Or it could be something else. Anyway, I need help with this. Any ideas, computer-savvies?

i am having the same problem except my computer is totaly pooched. i strongly suggest you back up everything you want to keep right this minitue. if your hd goes, you will kill yourself if it takes all your important files with it.

First I have to find some way to back it all up.

Interesting discovery, though. I was browsing Youtube earlier when I locked up again. But to my surprise, Trillian was still fully functional. Except sound. No sound. And the little message boxes that tell me when somebody logs on/off wouldn't go away. But I was still able to use it, and was able to tell everyone in a chatroom I was in what just happened.

hae you tried scaning all drives for errors? a defragging might not be a bad idea too.

i think your system is suffering because its being used out of spec. since your using it to play a game it cant support (all compants dont seem to work well according to your statements) its creating errors and making it unstable. i dont have enough computer knoweldge to know how deep those errors can go. if your scans dont fix the immidate problem them you could be looking at something much more serious. take this as a preemperative warning sign and back up your stuff to either a few cds, perhaps to an online website that you control, and start looking for a new computer. you could try even axing the game.

I just defragged the other day. I scan my hard drive for errors, but the results screen goes by so quick I don't really have a good chance to see what it found, though I think there's usually something it finds. Whether it's a permanent something, I dunno.

Currently, all my specs cover the recommended (not required, but the good specs) for SL. It is not the game.

In fact, if there's ever any doubt that the problem is getting worse, I'm more certain than ever, now. I just locked up for the third time today. Not one of these lockups was while I was playing SL. No doubt about it, I'm having a hardware failure.

Get a mac.

Alright, how much would it cost to get a Mac compared to getting a new PC? If it's too much more expensive (I'd only need $400-500 for a new PC), I'll just get another PC. I wasn't expecting my computer to die out on me so soon, so I didn't have much time to start saving up.

Side-note: Holy crap, I've got too much stuff. What to save, and what not to worry about.

Pull off the side casing of your computer, and turn on the machine.
Listen to the harddrive.

While a computer is booting, a harddrive should have a fairly consistent sound - all the way until your desktop is completely loaded. If it any time it pauses and clicks a couple of times, then pauses and clicks a couple of times - accompanied by what may appear to be a "lock up", then its your harddrive.

You could also check while you're in the middle of your computer being locked up - just listen to the harddrive. If you think it sounds irregular, there is probably something wrong with it.

(one of my computers had the same problem until I changed the harddrive)

As a side note, everybody should have at least one spare harddrive. External USB, external encasing, an internal that you don't keep hooked up.. anything. It's only like a hundred bucks for a 3-5 hundred gig drive, and you can keep your stuff backed up at all times with it. (I have 7 harddrives now - almost 3TB of space)

Also, defrag. Go to add/remove programs and take out anything you don't use frequently or don't recognise. Use one or two anti-spy/adware programs with deep clean setting on. If you manage to get your computer into good working order, set a restore point so you can just click a couple of times to undo everything in the future.

You also may want to consider HijackThis. It picks up a lot of things that antivirus never does, and is pretty much guaranteed to find everything on your harddrive that you don't want to be there - with that knowledge you can manually get rid of viruses and other problems not related to the hardware itself.

As a final note, you shouldn't do anything using your computer that your computer obviously doesn't like. Just saying.

Quoted for truth.

I've got 3 in case and an external. Though its just around over half a TB.

*notes down info for later*

My uncle finally got around to seeing all my issues firsthand. He's completely baffled. He's gonna search the net for answers, but his current verdict is "We may have to rebuild."

By the way, my computer locked up at around 10:12 this morning. I was at work. Nothing was running. It was basically sitting there in the same state it would be if I had just rebooted and Windows finished loading everything.

If your uncle (or anyone you know, really) has parts lying around, switch out parts individually to try to narrow down the problem.

Rebuilding should really be a last resort, far after drastic things like formats and trying other parts.

Various issues suggested corruption on my hard drive. We did a reformat. I'm running on dial-up at the moment, so here's a link to the results.

http://draygone.livejournal.com/

It's kinda starting to sound more like a problem with your mobo.

I'm not even sure what that means. And I'm not sure I want to.

Anyway, I'm back. Gotta recover all the stuff I unnecessarily had to store away. And restore certain settings. Gotta turn that blasted spellcheck off of Firefox.

Mobo = Motherboard. And yeah, if you are having the same issues, then it's definately hardware. And you say your ram and video card is good... I'm also pretty confident that your hard drive is alright too. So I believe Stythe is correct.

Yeah, I am suspicious of my motherboard, now. If that's the problem, I'm better off getting a new computer.

It finally happened. Expect me to be away for a while.

http://draygone.livejournal.com/

Except the new computer came in faster than expected. So, um... I'm back.

Much welcome back.

From the chat, it seems like you've gotten yourself quite a competent machine. Have you been able to use everything you've wanted so far without any issues?