Techies

[Man53]

Hey guys, I know some of you here can do a little bit of tech work before your PC's blow up, so I figure I'll ask you guys a question. My step-mom came to me about her computer problems, her comp randomly locks up for "no apparent reason" when she's playing a game, surfing the net, working with her "work-stuff" and simply when her screen-saver comes up. Also she claims to sometimes (rarely) hear the windows's "shuttuing-down" sound. I ran a diag and didn't find much, fixed the small stuff, but she still seems to have trouble. Any ideas?

*S* Thanks

Man53

[M1A2Tanker]

Well there's the obvious, "Did you clear temp files?" "Run Defrag? Scandisk? Anti-Virus?  Spybot?" questions.

Could be a RAM issue, or video card problem, or possibly some other hardware component is failing.  I'm leaning towards RAM or deseperate need to clean the harddrive, but there could be other possibilities.

[Holmes]

Sounds like possible spyware and trojans to me... might run a good anti virus check on it, and an ad-aware scan.

However, a going bad motherboard exhibits about the same characteristics, if the above doesnt solve it then the latter may be the issue.

[Acehigh]

sounds like what I was going through with "killer"  lol.  unfortunately all of my scanners quit working too so I know spyware and what not was the problem with mine.  spyware and viruses would also be my first guess. 

[Azis]

Well with the very little info you provided the possibilities are so many its not even worth the effort to afford a guess.
PC age, type, components....Emachine Dell or clone or??????
Operating System....???? SP...? Updates on/off....when last....???
Size and speed of hard drive....??? Space used/empty ....last format??
Memory type and style...????

If it is actually shutting down on its own, you can find free online virus scans, which is a good idea no matter what.
What internet connection...??? Does it happen when Offline as well as online???
Case been cleaned...recently ??? ever??? Dust is a great insulator and heat kills PC components.
Power strip??? Has the outlet used for the PC or the power strip steadily become overloaded???......

Just so many things that it could be...I'd start with the things that should be done on a regular basis ne way...cleaning the case check all the cords run system cleanups, remove unused and or old programs, shut down programs that show in the task bar and use system startup to keep them from running unless they are needed...

Provide some specifics and so can I  :

[WildSlash]

Easiest first.

1 - Make sure all the fans are working.

2 - Blow out all fans/heatsinks with compressed air.  Also blow out the power supply.  EDIT:  Do this OUTSIDE!!!

3 - If it's not heat, my next guess would be ram, if there is more than one stick in the system, pull one at a time and see if the problem goes away.

4 - If that don't fix it, then as Azis said, need more info.