My computer crashed

I was posting something earlier and my computer totally froze up. No big deal, right? So I turned it off and turned it back on and kept getting messages about some Windows configuration was corrupted and it promted me to to a system recovery. Some of my stuff has disappeared, but overall things seem to be okay.

Does anyone have any idea what would cause a freeze up that serious? I'd like to avoid that happening again. This computer is only about 2 years old.

Becky

buy a mac

this has happened three times to my pc now

There are many things that could've caused it, from viruses to HD failure to overheating to Windows registry fault. What was the exact error message?

Ice

I can't remember the exact message. Thanks for the ideas to help.

Becky

From what I have experienced, mysterious freeze ups are quite often caused by 1) overheating 2) hdd failure 3) bad ram.

Of course, its always possible that some virus or *user* accidentally messed something up within windows.

One quite handy solution is to re-install win without rmoving/formatting. That way u might save your work/settings/installed progs. That of course, if your comp seems to be working okay, meaning no obvious broken components.

FORGOT TO ADD:
Last time I had similar problem, it was caused by motherboard. At first comp froze, then refused to boot at all. Reinstalling went fine, but comp still wouldn't boot. After few tries, comp refused to recognize cd drive. With assistance from the shop I bought the crap from I managed to sort it out to motherboard

Usualy freez never end up losing data.... so i think its got to have a problem with hard disk and may have formed some bad sector in it and so lost a data and that could be real problem coz bad sectors usualy keep on growing.. You can check about it by

1. Double-click on My Computer to open the My Computer window.

2. Select the disk that you want to diagnose and repair.

3. Choose Properties from the File menu. You should see the Properties window for the drive that you selected.

4. Choose the Tools tab.

5. Click the Check Now button under Error Checking Status.

6. Depending on your version of Windows, choose either "Thorough" or "Scan for and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors."

7. Click on Start.

I cannot help I am such computer illiterate but yesterday my computer was extremely slow .. everything was slow my applications didn't work (neither real player nor window media pleyer) and when I chatted with my friends what I typed took forvever to appear on the window and same when I hit the sent button ... then I re-started and everythng was fine again ... I don't know what happened but maybe as I bragged mac never have problems it was the some prooves it wasn't true LOL

I Dont think thats any serious problem, usualy re-starting the system solve most of these kind of problem, so before u try bangging ur head on it, better first try to restart it...

thanks for the info Allwyn ...I wish you told me that yesterday .. my head hurts today