Problems with PC - Freezing

Ms_Chocaholic

Hi
I wonder if anyone could offer me any help in solving a problem I am experiencing with my PC.
Please be gentle cos I'm hopeless with anything technical and if you could reply in the simplest terms it would be much appreciated.

Often while online, it will freeze and I get a blue screen, saying something about a "physical dump". Sometimes I can't switch the PC off at the on/off button, I have to switch it off on the socket. When I try to get online again after re-booting, it oftne won't connect and I then have to restart PC before it does.

Sometimes the PC just goes off (ie to the blue screen), can be happily browsing the net and no idea that it is/has freezed, just get the blue screen. Other times it looks likes it's about to freeze, get a white box type thing in the top left hand corner but then it unfreezes itself and everything's okay (for a while).

This seems to be happening quite a lot recently, it did this about 3 times yesterday evening (in about 4/5 hours), only happenced once tonight so far but waiting for more.

I'm on AOL if that makes a difference (VR I think).

Hope someone can help.

Ms C xx

dagger_meerkat

Does this only happen when you are online browsing? What are the specs for your pc? How long have you had the problem for and do you remember making any changes whatsoever before the errors started occurring. Such faults are really hard to narrow down:

It could be anything from faulty memory, software drivers to an operating system glitch. When was the last time you formatted the PC?

Anthony2oo5

as dagger states, it could be the wrong drivers, or blue screens usually occur with faulty hardware. May that be the RAM or the network card.

Does it ONLY happen when you use the internet ?

Ms_Chocaholic

Thanks for your help. In answer to your questions:

Yes, it does only happen when I'm online, mind you, the computer is hardly ever on at other times.

I've had this problem for a couple of weeks only - the only thing that I can think of that might have affected it in that period is I have downloaded is AOL VR. Was previously using AOL 9.0 and I've not uninstalled 9.0 from the PC - not even sure how to, could this be it?

When you ask the last time I formatted the PC - what's that, never done it, don't even know what it is.

I have a Dell PC (with Windows XP), don't know more than that tho - how do I find out the specs, it's about 3 years old at a guess though.

Thanks.
Ms C xx