computer random freezing

i have windows vista, and while watching videos on the internet, or my own movies, the pc just freezes, and i have to hold the power button to reboot it. its getting really annoying. i watch a video for more than 20 minutes without this happening. i uninstalled recently installed software… and i have no idea what could be causing this. if anyone knows how to fix this once and for all, thank you (the drivers are up to date)

Does this happen at random ? or does it always happen when you are making the system work hard ?
Assuming the latter, I have to wonder about system temp's, get and run SpeedFan and see what that reports the temps as, then we can go from there.

Does this happen at random ? or does it always happen when you are making the system work hard ?
Assuming the latter, I have to wonder about system temp's, get and run SpeedFan and see what that reports the temps as, then we can go from there.

no. its not working hard.. i just turn it on, sometimes after several tries (blue screen of death), and watch some video either on youtube or in my pc, and it just freezes up. sometimes with bsod, sometimes just freezes..

sorry for the double post. just gonna point out that the blue screen says STOP: 0x000000(some 2 letters or numbers) different ones every time..

This type of problem can result from several causes…

Heat <– Run SpeedFan - Physically clean inside the machine, particularly heatsinks and air flow routes
Device Driver corruption <– Check Device Driver for alerts / uninstall-reinstall all of your machine's device drivers
RAM Memory errors from faulty Physical RAM <– Run Memtest86 or Windows Memory Diagnostic (any error indicates faulty RAM that should be replaced)
Hard Drive disk faults <– Run CHKDSK /r
Operating System - Windows files missing or corrupt <– Run SFC /scannow (have your Windows installation media available)

Quite often, this type of problem is related to Video Graphics adapter card (either driver corruption or physical card failure)
— Be sure to use a Driver Sweeper to completely uninstall graphics driver before updating or reinstalling driver.

To add to Doug's help, if you can get the exact error code it may offer clues to whats going on, so take note of the exact error and let us know if you can, or check the Event Viewer in Control Panel - Admin Tools, these can sometimes help narrow down what is going wrong, but do check the temp's regardless as Doug said.

tried the speedfan. heres is what its saying : (im not sure this info is what you wanted ) GPU: 0C temp1: 20C temp2: 50C temp3 :25C HD0: 39C HD1: 38C temp1: 40C Core: 36C

also, the blue screen said to try disabling caching and shadowing. i tried it on startup, but those 2 options were nowhere to be found. (really frustrating, looking in every subfolder and nothing)

one more thing. the graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 i cant find a link to the driver.. its not on the nvidia page.. maybe it is and im just stupid..

thanks doug. while installing the driver, i got a blue screed that described the error as : RQL_NOT_LESS_OR _EQUAL (tried again .. it happened TWICE) under that was some advice bullcrap, and under that there was STOP 0x0000000A (0x000000BF 0x00000010 0x00000001 (the fourth one was too long to memorize berofe the reboot) whats up with that ? im getting pretty angry with this. i tried system recovery to see if it would change anything and when the "windows is loading files" bar reached the end, i got a blue screen .. its like it wants to prevent me from fixing it in any way. wont even let me install the graphics driver without screwing me over at the exact same point of the installation process every time the funny thing is that it only freezes when im watching a video. on youtube or putfile or any other site. and blue screens prevent me from reinstalling the possibly corrupted driver

This error is often related to incompatible hardware, or corruptions of hardware driver. Did you upgrade this machine from XP to Vista, or did it come originally with Vista? Was there a time when this problem did not occur, even when viewing videos? If it used to work properly, and then started having problems, what changes may have been made at the time? New Hardware? New Software applications? added peripherals such as USB HD, USB mouse, USB keyboard, USB Printer?

Did you "uninstall" the old video driver before "installing" the freshly downloaded one? That would be important.

its original vista. i thought about making it into an XP but figured it might cause problems so i left it like it was welll . it doesnt happen when watching videos that arent online. so that might be some clue.. maybe it has something to do with the usb wireless key (with which i also have a problem) — the usb key just randomly disconnects from the router. sometimes it get fixes by just plugging it into a different usb port, and sometimes i have to power off the router. wait 30 seconds and plug it back in.. (ist a WG111T 108Mbps wireless 2.0Adapter) this is another issue i have been having, that might not be related. come to think of it, the problems didnt start when i started using the wifi usb key.. and it always occurs when watching videos online. sometimes after 10 minutes, sometimes after 3 minutes. its bound to happen sooner or later. the record is about 34 minutes without freezing.. i cant recall adding new hardware right before the problems started.. i got a new keyboard and mouse about 4 months before this started. is it possible an installed program might be causing this ? or some kind of internet memory ? no i didnt uninstall it. some sites said its ok to just install over it. i'll try it now (started installing driver. i bet its gonna shut me off 1 minute from now) good news. succesfuly installed the graphics driver. im gonna restart and try watching some videos.

What you've said so far does seem to point to a video issue, just a thought, how much ram are you running ?
I ask as I saw a comment while searching about an issue with vista and 3gig (or more IIRC), the temp's you report are fine, BUT, it does not see your video card, which is the main one we need ATM, give PC WIZARD a try, see if that can report this, it's the icon like a volt meter\speedo on the left once it's loaded, apart fro that it looks like Doug is taking great care of you.