Computer won't boot up, freezes on Windows install
 

My girlfriend's computer wasn't starting up anymore, so I suggested to format (since it's been over 2 years, there was a lot of stuff on there, and when connected to another computer as a slave... there were multiple file errors being reported. Something was pooched). After backing up and trying to format/reinstall Windows XP, the computer freezes on the install.

Now, there have been CPU over-heating problems that I was going to buy another heatsink for, but never got around to yet. Could this be the problem? Or does it sound like the harddrive is bad? Bad RAM?

The computer parts are all less than 2 years old, so I don't really want to tell her to buy new parts already... I was hoping someone here knows what could be wrong. If not, I'll have to buy a heatsink and go from there.

On which part of the reinstall does it freeze?

Yep, where is it at when installing?

She said it frooze when it started copying files over. I'll do another reinstall again today to check it out.

If it's freezing at a specific point every time, could be the disk you're using to install is screwy.

Or it could be the hard drive is dying, which would also explain the problems pre-format. If it's hardware, the drive is my most likely suspect from those symptoms.

And now that I re-read, yeah. Fix the cooling situation too. :)

Good chance it can be bad memory, try pulling out some dims to see if that solves the problem.

I managed to get it to install, but the BIOS screen frooze once. Also, as I was trying to set up other stuff right after install, it frooze again. I rebooted, and then after a couple of minutes it rebooted itself for no reason (or turned off really... didn't come back on itself).

Think this sounds like RAM, or does it seem more likely to be a cooling problem? I was going to buy a new heatsink on the weekend...