Odd Hannging Problem

[Aussiblue]

It's an HP Pavilion 6305 (AP) 256 MB Memory W98 SE. The problem has come and gone (for a week) over the last month and seemed worse since the last MSN upgrade. It seemed to temporarily fix itself for a week with the third last McAfee update so I thought it might be a McAfee problem but it's back again.

It has started freezing randomly (no keyboard response) and usually only a power switch off will fix it. When I run the Amidiag (American Megatrends) diagnostic DOS based program yesterday it also hung the first two times at two different points (said Winmodem was faulty and the CPU was a 36 Mhz processor instead of 366. and then froze) Third, fourth and subsequent attempts it ran OK. I ran the advanced DOS based diagnostics in batch mode all day and it worked fine did not freeze and found no faults.

It also seems to run OK if I can keep it going for and hour or so without doing anything ie boot up and leave Windows desktop open and open no programs. However if I do otherwise and I reboot 101 time after 101 freezes it keeps playing up.

All this seems to point to some hardware problem; something that works OK after its been running uninterupted for a while but I am open to suggestions.

It also seems to have excessive activity after windows is loaded and the desktop opens but CTRL,ALT, DELETE Norton CrashGuard and various bits of software that show the running processes reveals nothing new. MCAfee virus scan has found nothing. While I have Zone Alarm Outlook came up with a popup yesterday that said a program was trying to access my address book and that worrired me.

I have tried reinstalling McAfee, Outlook, IE and MSN but there has been no change. Also ran SFC, Win Doctor, Speed Disk, Reg Clean, etc etc. The CPU and Power Supply fans are spinning and ambient temperature doesn't appear an issue (dies hot or cold)

My next move will be dismantle it and reseat every board and chip etc. Next will be to but a new CPU and Motherboard but if it will have to be cheap at the moment; I'd rather wait to get a fast setup but if its the CPU or MB that at fault my current liquidity will mean a bargain basement barebones 1500 Duron and PChips MB.