Random freeze problem

Question

So basically here is the issue; The last two days or so my computer will randomly freeze up, generally the scenario is i'll be listening to music on itunes and browsing the web. Sometimes it it'll just freeze. No mouse movement, ctrl-alt-del doesnt get a response, my led's arent signaling, sometimes monitor goes blank with a no signal error from the monitor. Its becoming more frequent too.
I have a couple of suspicions as to the cause but i'm not sure. Last thursday i installed a ATI TV Tuner in a PCI slot. I fairly certain this is the ultimate root of the problem but to what actually is the problem and how to fix it i'm not sure.
It worked fine on Thursday and most of Friday. But i think on friday evening my computer didnt boot up properly. It got to Windows XP just fine, i selected my username and then it just rebooted, it did this twice and then it loaded up, said there was an error and the error report was corrupted... and i didnt have another issue that night, so i was confused but it ran fine after that. the boot up issue hasnt happened since then, just the freezing.
When it freezes i hit the reboot button and today the error report said it was a hardware crash and suggested it was the CPU/RAM/Mobo/Power.
System Specs:
MB - MSI 915 NEO2 PLATINUM Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 915P ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU - Intel Pentium 4 540J Prescott 3.2GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80547PG3200EJ
RAM - 2x 1 Gb Sticks of CORSAIR ValueSelect 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200)
Power Supply - 420W +3.3V/28A +5V/40A +12V/18A
CD/DVD - LITE-ON Combo Drive Black IDE Model SOHC-5236K
Vid Card - MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380013AS 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150
Sound Card - use mother board sound
PCI 1 - Linksys Wireless-G Network Adapter
PCI 2 - ATI TV Wonder 200
i'm not sure of my bios date, i dont know how to check. my vid card drivers are version 8.2.1.2 from 12/05,(if there is no issue i'm not too good about keeping them up to date)
the drivers for the tv tuner appear to be up to date. if you have any questions let me know.
oh another issue that isnt as important, but is the cd audio line from the cd-drive to the mobo absolutely necessary? its in a really bad spot where it essentially blocks my PCI slot.

Answer 1

Hi,
I had similar problem. I am running dual screens on a 945P Platinum system with an ASUS silent EN6600 PCIE video card where the mouse would freeze in the left window only. My first thoughts were the video driver or card conflict but changing driver made no difference.
Problem finally turned into a BSOD and an unbootable system. Just once the BSOD stated that CDFS.SYS  was at fault but replacing this had no effect.
Re-installed XP from ground up taking system backups at each stage. All went well until I loaded Nero 6.6.0.8 and the mouse froze again. Backtracked to before Nero and have had no problems to date, well not with the mouse or BSOD but plenty with distorted audio and jerky video but that is another ongoing problem yet to be overcome.
Looking back I realised that the mouse generally froze when opening or closing the DVD/CD drive so Nero must have been butting in on CDFS.SYS.
Probably not your problem but it shows how unrelated problems can be from the source.
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG, 25/11/2005
SMBIOS Version 2.2
Windows Directory D:\WINDOWS (dual boot system with Win 2000 Pro on C: hence XP on D:)
System Directory D:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume3
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name EVL01\Administrator
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 548.78 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 3.87 GB
Page File D:\pagefile.sys
Mainboard 945P Platinum
Video ASUS silent EN6600