PC freezes up

Alright y'all, here's the situation:

About a week ago, my PC has been experiencing these major freezes that occur unexpectedly. From what I see, the screen would go black for a second and then come back on, but everything on it is frozen, and I can't get a response out of the mouse or keyboard. The only way to get out of it is a hard reset.

I could be doing what I normally do on it, listen to music, browsing on the web, and it would freeze up, I could be doing nothing and it would freeze up. It could be just minutes after turning on, before I log in, or even hours after I leave it on. The freeze up would come without any warning, no visual or sound clues to when the next time it would happen.

Now, this past week, I've been putting forwards different ideas as to why it would do it:

1. Dusted the computer (it needed one), out of the idea that maybe it was overheating.

2. Detached and reattached hard components, perhaps due to loose components.

3. Ran both malware and virus scans, which showed nothing untowards.

4. Ran a chkdsk which said there were some errors in the main drive, but have yet to allow it to attempt to fix it, so that question is open, although I doubt it is impending hard drive failure.

Personally, I suspect that the issue may be in the hardware, and something is failing randomly causing a cascade that makes the entire PC freeze like this.

So, anyone have some ideas as to what's going on with my PC?

Most amazing jew boots

Check Event Logs for anything that may be related to your problem.

This sounds like something going on with the Motherboard, RAM, or Hard Disk. In that order.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

How old is your computer?
Specs? (os, cpu, mobo, or make and model # for prebuilt systems)

Also, what Zerg requests.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I've just performed a chkdsk /r and it said it fixed "one or more errors", what kind and how many were not specified, so hopefully that removes one variable.

Zerg: The event logs around those times how no warning signs or anything out of the ordinary.

Pack: the computer was bought in 2003, Compaq Presario 5411 line, Windows XP Home Edition v. 2002, AMD Athlon 2600+

Right now I'm going to run as little as possible and see what happens.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

My computer started doing the same thing right before the motherboard fried.

I was speaking idiomatically.