Q: Now, I do pretty well with computers but issues have popped up on both hubby and my computer in the last few days. My hubby's computer hardly has anything on it at all, and its highly unlikely that there's a virus (he's hardly ever on it and I don't use his computer. Mine is better). Thing is, its suddenly freezing solid. It has to be hard booted because no key combination will work. I thought maybe its a Windows problem (he has xp, 512 mb ram, and a 1.7 g processor) but I'm actually not certain how to test that. We ran Norton Antivirus on it and it didn't find a virus. Any idea? And then there's the issue that I'm having with my computer and its starting to REALLY aggravate me. Now, I use the hell out of my computer. Its my baby and I have many games on it. We had a bad thunder and lightning storm the other night and I stupidly didn't unplug it before a bolt of lightning hit somewhere near the house. I've been having a weird problem ever since. At first it only happened once, then yesterday and today, it happened four times each day. Whats happening is that, when my computer boots, the screen image flashes and then goes blank. It gets to windows and does the same. I have to cold boot it (not good for the computer, I know) many times before it will boot up with an active monitor. When it finally boots properly, there are no issues, but I'm starting to get scared to shut down the computer for fear it won't boot again. So... my question is this... do you think its my monitor, my video card, or just plain windows thats causing the problem? I think its more likely my monitor or video card than it is windows. But if its the video card, you'd think more things on the computer would be affected. Any ideas?
A: For the first question: Hmm. This is a strange problem. I think it might be something wrong whit the hardware that comp has. Anyways I think you should check it again for viruses and also for trojans! As I know the Norton Antivirus only searches for viruses but not for trojans. For a free anti spyware software I would recommend Spyware Terminator. I think you also should check the computer whit something other than Norton Antivirus. There are a lots of free programs. I recommend: Avast and maybe AVG. For the second question: I think that you should try to test your computer. Connect a monitor other than the one you are useing to you computer and see if it has any problems during bootup. If so than the problem is most likely caused by your videocard but not necessarly!