Hi,
First time poster here.  We have an Emachine with WindowsXP (I think professional).  I just found out that whenever it would "freeze" my husband would unplug the computer and just restart it.  Now, it brings up the SCREEN to start in safe mode, but no matter which option we choose - it just keeps restarting.  I've tried hitting F8, the timer stops, but nothing else.  I've tried to download a reboot disk, but had no luck.  I'm going to go home and open it up and dust it out based on other posts I've read.  Any other IDEAS or suggestions?Hi Mulreay here. To me and I'm no expert it SOUNDS like you may be infected or your hard drive is shot. Rather than give you some USELESS advice all I can say is the answer will come just be patient. How often was it freezing...? Freezing at startup? How long until it freezes? Unplug before opening the case, blow out the dust, but don't touch anything physically.Unfortunately, I don't know how often it was freezing or what he was doing at the time.  I have defragged and debugged and compressed and scanned for spyware a couple of months ago (still have firewall and spyware) because of slowness and popups.  But I just found out yesterday that it would freeze and how my husband handled it      I do know it wasn't freezing at the startup, it was while he was on the internet.  I DEFINITELY will unplug it and wouldn't consider touching anything inside!!  Thanks