Computer freezing - No errors/BSOD

[AmuseMe]

I was helping my friend out with his computer because he has been having some weird issues with his PC freezing. You can be doing anything at all, and it will randomly freeze. I mean you can be on for two seconds, or two hours. It just stops and you need to hold the power to shut it off. When you turn it back on, it boots fine.

Windows XP Home 32-bit
Intel e8400
GeForce 8400
2GB RAM

Everything is at stock settings, no overclocking. He has decent air-flow. I can't see it being a heat issue. Any help is appretiated.

[CORE]

Hi I experienced the same thing on windows vista 64bit. For me its not the hardware (as i thought the mobo) but its the programs running. In my case, the culprit was firefox 3.0 apparently whenever my system freezes firefox 3.0 is running for im surfing the web or doing something while firefox is open. Hope this helps

[chouchou]

I'm not that great at the whole troubleshooting thing, but my first guess would be your power supply.
If not, run Memtest 86+ for a good 4-5 hours and if that passes I'm fresh out of ideas.
You'll get more responses soon, tho!

[sswilson]

Since it's completely random, I'd be more inclined to look at software/OS issues. If it were me, I'd reformat / install everything fresh, but that's just me.... :)

[saltyvinegar]

Do you have another PSU you can try and pull/switch sticks of RAM?

[Arinoth]

Going to have to agree with some of the other guys, it sounds like it could be a PSU issue if it happens at randoms. Could very well be a leaking/dead cap which is causing there to be insufficient power when it is required (boot up is the highest power spikes typically) or higher loads will cause there to be a higher strain on the PSU to output the needed voltage

[KeepSix]

My stock 8800 GT was overheating and borking my rig until I ran the GPU fan at 100%. Never ran across that before. Took me days to isolate it. Same behaviour as yours. A few minutes of gaming, or a few hours of surfing, and it would just stop responding. Weirdness. It's worth a look at least.