BleepingComputer.com: PC freezes

My Dell desktop freezes after a restart. The wallpaper comes up but no icons. CTRL ALT DELETE does nothing, you cant even shut it down. You have to turn it off with the off switch. Sometimes you have to go through this procedure 3 or 4 times before it finally comes on. Then it may work for awhile and then it just locks up again. I’m not sure if it is hardware or soft ware. Any suggestions?
Running XP Pro

What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

nothing new. I'm wondering if it could be a power supply problem

What happens when you boot to safe mode?

I booted in safe mode 4 or 5 times and I did not have any freezes

Open msconfig and on the General tab choose "selective startup" (uncheck all three items) and reboot. Does the problem still occur? If not, start adding items back to msconfig one or two at a time, rebooting after each change, until the problem reappears and you'll have identified the offending process. This is clearly a time consuming procedure, but it is the best way to determine if some process loading with the system is the cause of your problem.
After you've isolated the cause, do not use msconfig to permanently disable the process. Instead, if it is a service go to START - RUN and type: services.msc (then press enter) and disable the service OR, if it a program, you can download & run a simple app such as Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml) to enable, disable, or otherwise manage startup programs.

thanks, i'll give it a try and let you know