I'm trying to compile a list of causes for a computer freezing in order to help people who post with this problem.

The list below is taken from personal experience and from the PC guide (searching back for the past 2 years). As you can see, most of the causes are hardware related.

If you have any personal experience that you can add, please do so in this thread. Thanks.

Freezing – bad CD burner
Freezing – bad LAN card
Freeze, crash to Desk top, general protection error – overheated CPU
Freeze or restart after installing sound card – sound driver
Freeze – bad CD-RW
Freezes, spontaneous reboots and BSOD – motherboard had blown caps
Freeze when booting and white video stripe– bad CD-RW
Freeze within ten minutes of power up – bad hard drive
Freeze (random) – fixed by moving modem to different PCI slot.
Freeze – no thermal paste on CPU heatsink
Freezes – bad on-board video card
Freeze – inadequate and old PSU
Freeze (random during games) – fixed by replacing MB
Freeze – replaced MB
Freeze – over heat
Freeze – when installed new CPU. Went away when old CPU reinstalled
Freeze – bad CD-Rom
Freeze during XP boot at splash screen – bad Halflife install/uninstall – fixed by system restore
Freeze – random, within 5 minutes – MB/memory incompatability

You forgot:

Freeze - because Windoze felt like it...

Freeze – bad CD-Rom

I assume your intended meaning was a faulty drive, but I have seen a case where a (physically)cracked CD froze the machine on bootup.

Originally posted by gwallen4
Freeze (random) – fixed by moving modem to different PCI slot.I would add...

Freeze (immediate) - addition of PCI card resulting in an IRQ conflict.