Computer freezes when windows loads

[kasavien]

Hi all, was wondering if anyone could help, My Dads computer which used to belong to me ocassionally freezes when windows has loaded, so it is not possible to load any applications or anything really, ctrl alt del does not work either, the only way to resolve the problem is to restart the computer, and then everything works properly.

The setup is as follows

AMD 2600+
512mb corsair value select 2700
Asus motherboard
9600XT
2 hard drives, one is nearly three years old with windows xp home installed on it i think its an 80Gb Maxtor diamondmax, the other is a western digital 80Gb which is used as storage and is just over a year old.
Theres the usual optical drives too

If anyone can help it would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Andy

[Inferi]

Anything changed recently such as drivers?
Do a scan for the obvious - viruses, spyware (AV, Spybot, Adaware etc).

One other thing to possibly try is booting it with a Linux "live" CD - it doesn't install on hdd, just runs from CD. You need to download the CD ISO Image and burn on another PC. There are a few such as Knoppix, PCLinux, Ubuntu etc. If Linux is fine (surf etc for a while), then looks like a XP problem. May need to reinstall.

If Linux fails aswell, its looks like hardware. Try testing the components (RAM, HDD etc) in another PC - logical elimation.

[kasavien]

nothing's changed since i gave it to my dad after a full reinstall. may be worth me checking for viri and spyware etc, i have a ubuntu live cd i can try too.

Thanks

Andy

[scrandman]

http://www.memtest.org/