So I had this happen 2 times today... haven't happened before (except maybe once). 1st time I watched a youtube video in firefox, lost screen output and audio, second time I played SCII, screen was frozen and lost audio. I have no overclocking, cleaned dust out from it 4 months ago, after 3 years of no cleaning, not really sure what could be wrong here (no driver updates done, like the latest Nvidia ones that screws up my computer in a different way)
I would say : Issue with your GPU. I got freezes like this but it was on an old laptop
Don't you just hate when you don't really know what the problem is. Thankfully no bluscreens here for 2 years.
I don't know what tips to give you other then that if I was in your position I would have backed up all sensitive data, cleared CMOS reset the BIOS settings, format and reinstall Windows and just hope for the best.
Not the best advice but that's what I would have done.
I don't know if there is a good system scan software that could scan for potential hardware failures.
Have you monitored your task manager? if it freezes it means your RAM is at 100% usage but then again i find it hard to believe any program that could take up your whole 4GB of RAM, it also could be a VIRUS, i had this problem a while back where the computer freezes for 30 secs and works for 15 secs and again and again, i found out it was caused by a windows update, rolled back the update and everything was back to normal.
You could also try scanning it in safe mode, incase its a VIRUS
At the moment Gabriel's advice seems to be the best, back-up the whole thing and format
serious ram failure or gpu.
(or cpu failure, but i doubt that. ive never seen a cpu fail in my life)
...it could also be psu or mobo failure.
it could be so much, but its prob gpu or psu (check vram usage)
Yeah it could be literally anything sadly.
I had that exact same issue on my older computer. I removed one 512mb ram and reboot... no freezes at all. I figured it was ram. It used to be 3GB but now it's 2.5GB >_>
To me sounds like RAM or GPU heating, do your RAM stand near your CPU cooler? If you have free slots away from it move them, or if you are using four slots remove the two next to the cooler and see what happens, when I bought my RAM it happened a lot unless I moved it away from the CPU cooler or lowered the clock, I bought a RAM cooler set and now it's fine.
Eh looks like the final RIP just hit it today, yesterday it froze during Win7 boot, and I had to run the repair tool after reboot, so I just put it in sleep yesterday nigth. But when I woke it, there was no output or ligth in mouse/keyboard. After turning it of, when turning on, power didn't activate. After flipping the power switch off/on, now it turned on power but no output... a friend of one room mate says it probably the power supply.
I am awaiting reply from tech support where I bougth it, basically I'm wondering if I should send for repair, scrap, and should I even try booting it anymore? Now I'm using the old school laptop I always hated, actually this crap never ever crashed on me, the irony...
If it doesn't power on anymore it's power supply (90% sure), unless you fried your mobo somehow (5% chance)
Does the FANs start running when you press the power button?