Computer Freezing

My computer ALWAYS freezes. On average, probably about once every 24 hour period. I've done spyware checks (adaware), I have zone alarm as a firewall, so I don't think thats a problem. It happens randomy as well. I could be writing out something for school, sleeping, whatever and it would just freeze right in the middle of it, leading me to manually press the button to reset.

Anyone know what the problem could be?

Bad Memory...hard drive starting to fail? Add any new hardware or software recently? I would run some stress tests..to see if any hardware fails.

If it freezes without running anything (i.e. you boot up the OS and walk away) then my first suspicions would be overheating or power supply problems.

If it only happens after working on the PC awhile, with a lot of things running, then I'd suspect RAM. Download the Memtest86+ boot CD or floppy image, then boot from it and let it run overnight. If you get any errors after a few complete passes, start pulling/swapping DIMM's until you find the faulty one.

Yeah, like dmorris said, it could be overheating. Get a program called Motherboard Monitor, and look up what temperatures your CPU can handle safely.

I know awhile ago i had a 250gigger in my computer and I would boot up the pc and do nothing, just boot it and let it load all the startup programs...walk away and come back and it was frozen, couldn't move the mouse or anything...the hard drive kept shutting off...I turn off the computer and reboot and the hdd would come back on..but any real stress the hdd and it would just shut off..I felt the hdd and heard it, it wasn't on..causing the whole pc to lock up...Maxtors a piece of junk

Also, Prime95 runs a very reliable "Torture Test." Run that for 24hrs and it will let you know if memory is the issue. Overheating doesn't seem that likely for me, as it wouldn't just "freeze" and wait for you to do something, imo. If it were truly overheating it would probably crash and reboot itself.