Over the past few months my computer has been freezing irregularly and for varying lengths of time. My mouse/keyboard/any other input devices cease to respond, and the screen freezes on whatever it was displaying before, often in the middle of loading (images half-loaded, videos stuck on one still, etc.). This happens completely irregularly, sometimes not occurring for several days and sometimes within two minutes of the last freeze. It isn't triggered by any event either, as far as I can tell--it's frozen while loading web pages (even just opening a new tab), in the middle of video games, while watching videos, or even just moving my mouse. It occurs whether I have several applications open or only Google Chrome.
The weirdest part is this: sometimes, when everything else is completely frozen, my mouse plays the "loading" animation (the blue circle) for a while before it too freezes. Any sound that I am listening to when it freezes starts playing in really choppy slow-motion, eventually turning into static, buzzing, or silence. All the while the computer is completely non-responsive, the hard drive not sounding like it is doing anything at all.
I should add that my computer has been sort of weird from the beginning--the first time I took it out of the box and pressed the power button it turned on, but the hard drive wasn't spinning at all. It took several tries to get it to properly boot, and the problem persists today. Recently I've been avoiding shutting my computer down completely in fear that it won't start at all.
I have no idea if this is a software problem or a hardware problem, or even which part of my computer would be causing this. (Is my graphics driver or hard drive failing? Was my computer just defective from the beginning?) I've read some threads with similar freezing/hanging problems, but they seemed to mostly occur on laptops or Vista computers.
My Computer:
Dell Inspiron 560
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 27500 @ 2.93GHz 2.94 GHz
Ram: 8.00 GB
64 bit
Running Windows 7 Home Premium
I have no idea what other kind of information you guys might need, so please let me know if you need more. I've tried updating the drivers and the like, but I'm starting to think my computer's just dying. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance! (Sorry for the wall of text- I tried to explain it as detailed as I could)
The weirdest part is this: sometimes, when everything else is completely frozen, my mouse plays the "loading" animation (the blue circle) for a while before it too freezes. Any sound that I am listening to when it freezes starts playing in really choppy slow-motion, eventually turning into static, buzzing, or silence. All the while the computer is completely non-responsive, the hard drive not sounding like it is doing anything at all.
I should add that my computer has been sort of weird from the beginning--the first time I took it out of the box and pressed the power button it turned on, but the hard drive wasn't spinning at all. It took several tries to get it to properly boot, and the problem persists today. Recently I've been avoiding shutting my computer down completely in fear that it won't start at all.
I have no idea if this is a software problem or a hardware problem, or even which part of my computer would be causing this. (Is my graphics driver or hard drive failing? Was my computer just defective from the beginning?) I've read some threads with similar freezing/hanging problems, but they seemed to mostly occur on laptops or Vista computers.
My Computer:
Dell Inspiron 560
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 27500 @ 2.93GHz 2.94 GHz
Ram: 8.00 GB
64 bit
Running Windows 7 Home Premium
I have no idea what other kind of information you guys might need, so please let me know if you need more. I've tried updating the drivers and the like, but I'm starting to think my computer's just dying. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance! (Sorry for the wall of text- I tried to explain it as detailed as I could)