PC help please - pc freezes

Hi,
I know there's a few computer geeks around here so I thought id try here before registering up to a pc help forum.

My PC is freezing for about 10 seconds every 5 minutes or so. Annoying.
Matching up the times it freezes to the event viewer (WIN XP) the' source' of the error says 'atapi' and sometimes says 'i8042prt'

I should mention that I had an identical problem with this PC about 1 year ago and after lots of internet searching without any solutions, my dad recommended giving the inside of the PC a good clean actually which fixed the problem!.....(until now)

So it Seems obvious that it just needs another clean, which I done this morning.
Gave it a good vacuum inside, but, unfortunately it hasn't helped

Anyone got any ideas???

(i've attached the event viewer in case it helps anyone)

atapi errors are related to hard drives, CDs or their drivers or cables.

Try here:
http://www.windowsbbs.com/hardware/56608-computer-freezing-atapi-error.html

and here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314093/

quick attempt at a fix is to disconnect & reconnect the internal cables and wires to the hd and cdrom

Peter

thx Wacky.
ill check them links out.

Interestingly, Since running the 'disk clean up' utility (again on my dad's advice, lol) after posting this thread, it hasn't froze in about 10 minutes (and running) which is the longest yet since this began happening. Not holding my breath as the freezes are quite random in their frequency, but we'll see.....

check that all your fans are running, cpu, graphics card and case fans, it could be that its overheating. That's the only reason cleaning the pc would resolve the issue.

HDD on its way out? Back up everything. Which reminds me...

I hope not Shadow

Anyway, for now at least, amazingly just running the disk cleanup utility *seems* to have fixed it??!!
Hasn't frozen since. Would that make any sense???