PC problem: Anyone help?

Windows Vista tends to do crazy things, which is the only way we can explain them at this time, when CPU intensive activities take place. There is still a heap of bugs in it. My recommendation is emailing a personal friend, a big technology agnostic, who I can almost guarentee will give you a solution. He does it all for free, just copy your entire question here into a email and email it to "chris at pirillo dot com" (replace the at for @ and dot for .) without the quotations obviously too. His name is Chris Pirillo and he hosts his own chat at live dot pirillo dot com (replace dot for .) and his own blog at chris dot pirillo dot com (replace dot for .) Very knowledgeably guy! Will help you out! Hope I was of some help.

Roxio CD creator is not compatible with vista, I had the same problem I removed it Nero8 is the one to use.

Your main problem is that you are using Windows Vista. There is no service pack for vista yet so it is still full of bugs. I would suggest downgrading to Windows XP. I personally bought a laptop and had to downgrade it to windows xp because it kept crashing on me. That i think would be your best bet. And dont let anyone tell you that there are no drivers for anything downgraded. It took me a day to get all of the drivers for my HP Laptop for windows XP. But they are available.

If any reload CD came with computer then use it .i think you have some software problem .If you recently install any new software then UN install it .make sure all software's are compatible with vista.

Windows Vista takes up about 1GB of memory. I would say you need more memory.

Vista is a very hungry program, 1GB memory is the very minimum I'd recommend, personally I'd get rid of it and go back to XP for a year or so. I would also recommend removing Nero and sticking with Roxio, not many software packages like that will work in conjunction on one PC all the time. I'd recommend getting an external HDD too, keep as little as possible on your main drive, XP struggles when there's only 10% free space, Vista may be worse. Get a good Defrag. program like Ultimate Defrag., and maybe a program like Win Utilities, does a better job of keeping your registry in top condition, and it's got a memory optimiser, also check how many programs you've got running in the background, stop any that aren't necessary, Win utilities will help with that too. Also your Anti-Virus software may be using a lot of your memory too, try switching to Eset NOD32, uses hardly any memory but it used worldwide.

Computer technician here......geez Dave, the issue there is that I just cannot believe such a company like Packard Bell does not know just what the heck they're doing when building these computers. I hate to tell you, everything inside your computer is all mis-configured. I have come across some computers like that, that were mis-configured. I had to re-configure everthing in some of the computers in order for them to function properly. Let me tell you about Packard Bell company and what they once did. They once sold their computers here in the United States and alot of people started having problems with them and couldn't get the proper service from them either. It caused such a big impact on them that they (Packard Bell) decided to leave the United States and never sold not one of their computers here ever since. Here are two options I can give you....One is, take it to your local computer shop (regardless of your computer is still under Packard Bell's "Warranty") and have a professional computer technician to re-configure everything inside of your computer, or two, take it back from where you bought it from and ask for an exchange of another computer brand, preferably Dell. (If sold in your area) To be honest with you, Packard Bell has a bad reputation. I wish you the best of luck and you may add me to let me know how you make out there or if you have any other questions, I will gladly answer them for you. UPDATE: Windows Vista has already improved significantly and the problem is not caused by the software either. It is the hardware issues that is faced with. Thank you.

I recommend buying more memory(RAM). I have Vista as well and have had no issues with mine and I am running 4Gb of RAM. Vista itself requires almost 1Gb of RAM to run when idle, so depending on the application/program it may need a lot more. If you do not have enough RAM then you can expect weird or crazy things ot happen such as crashes and freezing. Vista is a good operating system but most people just do not get enough RAM for it to operatre freely. Everybody compares Xp to Vista and that can't be done. Vista is like XP was when it first was released. the hardware needs to catch up to the operating system and most people do not see that but XP was the same way. A lot of computers had issues cause there hardware was not good enough for XP. Other possibilties that could cause this is virus's, files that have been deleted, or just needing a good cleaning. Inside and outside the case. Could be overheating causing the computer to act up. Also run disk cleanup and defrag the hard drive. Close any programs that may be running that you do not need when burning a disc. A lot of things can be done to get Vista running smoothly and to burn the disc with no problems. make sure to update all the hardware with the latest firmware and drivers. Including the DVD burner.

Well... As you said that it crashes when burning DVDs, it works slowly, doen't load when booting... I can say that it could be your processor... Try to test it running other applications such as hardcore games. If it crashes, you will know why... If you still have your warranty, ask for a replacement. If not, try to borrow someone's cpu and try to make your pc run with it. If it works fine, buy a new cpu... Make sure you get the same socket, make and blablabla...