Sounds to me you either have spy/ad ware or a virus. What you need to do is go to an online virus scan site like: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ It needs to go through explorer browser. Follow the directions. Scan and clean your computer again and again until you get it all out. If you find one thing wrong and clean it/delete it, then run the check again. This will take hours and you must do a complete system scan. when it comes to Adware and Spyware you have to run the scan several times to make certain you get the base infecting program out of your system. Often the scanner will only pickup the active part of the ad/spy ware, there is the part that infected the computer which only activates AFTER the scan has cleaned out the active part reinfecting the computer. Further you might need to scan disk and clean the computer, followed by a defragmentation. For XP these programs are found through start/all programs/accessories/system tools. One says clean disk (it will scan for errors) and one says defragment disk. Run those after the virus scan and spyware/adware scan. When is the last time you updated your system via Windows updates? If the answer is more than a year or never, you also need to do all the recommended updates to get your system up to date. After a year things get pretty messy when it comes to old stuff running on the newer internet. and you might as well seek out and update drivers such as graphics and monitor, shockwave, java, etc. Of course after all of that updating you will need to scan/clean disk again and defrag. Another thing to consider is removing old programs and data that you do not use. I prefer to back everything up on CDs. I do have some old (5+ years) programs and documents and stuff that I access once a blue moon - keeping them on a CD will prevent them from becoming infected programs, and will leave room on your machine so it will run a tad faster. of course you must scan your computer for viruses, adware, spy ware before you back-up stuff on a CD - or the next time you run that CD you might reinfect the system. to do all of this will take a day, maybe more depending on what is going on with your system. Lastly I want to add to your todo list this little gem: http://www.microsuck.com/ Focus on the middle of the page were you will read about really hidden files. http://www.microsuck.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml This will tell you about how your disk space is getting smaller and smaller and how your computer is shifting through more and more data, slowing down and becoming buggy as time wears on. Of course they give you a manual way to clean up the 'mistakes' of microsoft, however there are programs and software out there that does the same thing. You will of course need to do searches for that stuff.

Another thing to check is if your CPU is overheating. Do you have a fan, or more than one fan if needed? When you boot up one time, press a function key so you can see the boot process one instruction at a time. One of the first things that comes up should be the CPU temp. If yours is over 70 degrees F, you're heading for some damage. It often starts in an isidious way, such as locking up on a long idle process as you've described. Just a quick, easy thing to check out, and definitely a case where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You can get a new CPU fan for about $20. A fried CPU is gonna be a LOT more expensive.

ok, either you have a virus or a hardware issue. make sure uve connected ur monitor properly and make sure the graphics card is inserted into the m.board properly. un virus scans using avg (recommened.