Tech Bite

Published 12:01 am Sunday, March 27, 2011

Q: My Dell Vostro PC freezes for no apparent reason — on the screen saver, while playing Solitaire, while playing Farmville. I ran all kinds of antivirus software and I didn’t find anything. Do you know what can cause this?

A: Unfortunately, there can be a dozen causes, ranging from cat hair in your fan to a loose RAM chip to faulty video drivers. In order, I would:

Spray all fans with compressed air to make sure they’re clear of dust and hair.

Run the Dell diagnostics, which are hidden on a special partition of your hard drive. Hit the F12 key as your system boots, and you can boot to the “Utility Partition” and run the diagnostics.

If that comes back clear, update your video card drivers from the Dell Support Web site (support.dell.com).

As a last resort, copy your data onto a flash drive or DVD and use the recovery partition to restore your PC to factory new and start over.