"Memory Leaks" ....i think

[MwAnDiP404]

the strangest things have been happening to my computer as of late. 2 things have been happenin. and this is what they are:
1. right in the middle of playing one of my games (Clive Barker's Undying, UT2k3, UT, Half-Life (with mods Day of Defeat and Counter Strike), and others. right in the middle of, at least around an 1 hour 2 into them, it freezes. LITERALLY. i mean no keyboard, no nothing. can't restart it or anything! its NEVER done that before. i have to restart it with the little button below the off button on my computer.

2. either than freezing, it restarts without question or me prompting it to do so. this is strange as hell. same way with playing games, it restarts right in the middle of them. even on basic programs like Microsoft Word or Power point it restarts.

i have no clue what this is and so far i don't how to fix this. my computer is pretty okay considering all the new games out there and such.
1.7ghz
256 mb ram
52x cd-rom
GeForce 2 64mb ram (that necessary?)

if this is a "memory leak", is there any way to fix this or any program to download that can supress this? thanks for the help.

[Budfred]

It could be a heat problem, you can test by running a game with the case open and a small desk fan blowing into it.... If it runs ok, it means it is probably a heat problem.

It could also be RAM, you can download a RAM checker at www.bootdisk.com and try it....

[biggmc01]

I agree with Budfred on the heat problem. When I was buying the parts to build my system the guy(small store great service) recommended an extra hard drive fan to avoid problems such as you are having.

[ski]

Also, check the CPU's temperature in your MB's BIOS or in a MB monitoring program in Windows.
If it's running over 60 deg. C, then make sure its fan is running at full speed, and that there is no dust accumulation on it.
If the fan is ok, then try a higher capacity fan.
If that does not work, then it's possible that the thermal compound between the heatsink and the CPU may have oozed out.
To remedy this, remove the CPU's heatsink, remove the thermal compound(a credit card and high purity alcohol work nicely) from the heat sink and the CPU die, and apply new compound(recommend Arctic Silver 3).

If overheating and bad memory are ruled out as the cause, then check the following:

-Restart the computer and shut down all unnecessary programs running in the background.

-Make sure everything is completely seated on the motherboard.

-Make sure there are no IRQ conflicts with a network card.
If no problems show up for the NIC in Device Manager, then remove it from DM, shut down, uninstall the card, and restart.

-Check for viruses and spyware.

-Overtaxed or bad power supply.
Swap it out with a different(preferably higher wattage) unit.

-Bad video card.
Swap it out with a known good card.

-Bad MB.
Swap it out with a known good MB.