Just bought a new home computer 6 months ago and??

my hard-drive has already crashed and needs a new video card, thankfully under warranty and have a back-up laptop, but what causes this? I have bellsouth virus, firewall, and spyware protection so should not be the reason??

Just bought a new home computer 6 months ago and??vincent

If you are talking about Hard Drive, then maybe it is because you don't have proper maintenance on it. You downloaded stuff, you erase them, you clog them, you delete them, in no time it comes crashing. 6 months I should say is the norm for heavy users like me.

You should do a Disk Defragmentation, Disk Clean up, Virus Check, and Registry check every once a while.

Your anti-virus, firewall and spyware protection merely prevent hackers from coming in and infecting your PC. It does not keeps your PC in a healthy state.

My recommended list of software

AVG Free Anti-Virus - Lightweight, does not takes up space

Norton Anti Virus - Heavyweight but costly

SpyBot Search %26 Destroy - free ware to hunt for spyware, better tracking than Ad-aware.

Tune Up utilities 2006 - Cleans up the junks in your PC for heavy surfer and heavy downloader like you, keeps its motor running and delete unused regisrty to keep it trim and healthy.

On top of that, used the built in Disk Defragmentation and Disk Clean Up in conjunction with the rest. It is at Start - All Programs - Accesories - System Tools.