Problem in installing FIFA 10 for PC.

Help, I can't figure out what my PC problem is..?

• My PC runs great until it would randomly freeze and I would be forced to reboot or it would be stuck frozen. Then it started to happen more and more, now up to the point where I have to reboot 5-10 times before it would even load the welcome screen. I thought it could be the harddrive, since when I've had weird problems like this in the past, that fixed it. Well I was wrong. I tried installing Windows on a new harddrive, and it would do the same thing, it actually froze in the process of installing countless timess. So I tried changing out the memory, and it wasn't that as well, same problem. A few things to note, that the PC never freezes if its not using the harddrive, running tests, configuring other settings, ect. Its not any games/programs as I've reinstalled windows and it even froze a few times during the process and even right before I select the harddrive to reformat/install on. I also figured out that when I played a video game that uses high amounts of CPU, it would never freeze---so what I do is when my PC actually starts, I'll load up 2 copies of the game keeping them in the background letting my CPU stay high.. I have no clue why this prevents the PC from freezing--but it does.. I've tried everything and I really don't want to pay some PC guy $100 just to tell me my PC is going bad and theirs nothing I can do, so I'd like to figure out whats wrong myself, and remove/install anything needed. Any ideas? All help much appreciated. Also, if I need to change out something in my laptop, please explain how I do this, I have another laptop with a bad motherboard, only about 1 year older than this laptop, same brand, so maybe I could use parts in their if needed.

• Answer:

  You have done a lot of good tests. Usually it's RAM or the power supply. You've eliminated RAM by swapping it - assuming you aren't goofing around with over-clocking or changing anything in the BIOS relating to RAM speeds - just let it pick it's own speed. The power supply is probably in good order - as it doesn't dump when you are running the thing hard with multiple resource-heavy games - but many power supply problems are intermittent and not just tied to heavy use - so that could still be it. Borrow one and swap it. Or try this... download and create a Ubuntu 11.04 (desktop version) CD. Basically you download the .ISO and then create a disc using most burner software. Do not make a data disc and just burn the .ISO file on there - it won't work. You have to pick something like "Create a Disc from an Image". Boot the Ubuntu disc. You will arrive at a menu asking if you want to "Install" it or "Try" it. Just try it - it will run off the disc and in RAM - without really touching the hard drive much, if at all. If all is well then you are closer to saying for sure that it has something to do with hard drive access. It could be a faulty supply of power to the hard drive or it could be in the part of the chipset handling your SATA headers. If that's the case, you might as well get another motherboard or computer. Heck, assuming this is a more modern PC and has a SATA drive - try plugging the hard drive into another SATA port too. If all else here fails - you will have at least tried Linux and you will wonder why you ever used Windows. :-)