Computer stalls / locks up regularly but...

[jamie.heaney]

Ok, officially 3 days of this now.

I turn on the computer and every minute, at least, it'll lock up for 5-10 seconds. If a program is in the middle of a process, the program locks up. I'm in the middle of a project and the fear is setting in.

Hoping it was a system error, I reboot with windows... worked once with the same problem after, but then I reboot and the system locked while rebooting. This HP has the little magic button next to the power button, so I hit it, and on reboot I have no lockups. Amazing, to me at least.

So now I turn on the computer, it constantly hangs, I stress, but when I hit the magic button everything is fine on reboot. I'm very nervous and have already backed up my work onto an external HD.

Software or Hardware, I've no idea where to start looking for a problem? Or do I chalk this up as a machine getting old and start saving for a new one?

Any and all help very appreciated.
Jamie

[oracle128]

Since you've already backed up it might be an idea to do a clean format and reinstall of Windows. That would be the best way to determine if it's software (it doesn't happen again) or hardware (it keeps happening after the format). Most likely, it's software. Usually I'd say that it were hardware, you'd have more problems by now, but if it's only happened for three days it's too early to tell. Another thing to look out for is critical system errors (possibly indicating bad RAM) or loud noises from the PC (possibly from a dying hard drive).