Alright. I'm having some problems. When I go start my averatec 3150h, one in 10 times it will crash without having displayed anything on the screen. The cd-rom light will stay stuck on. Or sometimes in the middle of operation the screen will go black (the fan will stay on) and the cd rom light will be stuck again. (Note: this happens even when there is no cd in the tray and even when i disconnect my cdrom drive). Also, I thought it was because of dust build up so I opened the laptop and removed a big clunk of dust stuck in the heatsink. I thought this would fix the problem though it still happens. What could this be? Should I thoroughly clean the inside of the computer to prevent overheating? Is it something else completely? Could it have to do with the cd-rom drive?

What do you mean crash? Like, does the computer restart, or just the screen just stay black? If the computer just stays black, there could be numerous causes. One would assume it might be the RAM, but if it's one in ten times, it's kinda hard to say. In order to test that, Download MemTest86: http://www.memtest86.com/ and burn it to a cd. Boot it up and it'll tell you if any errors came from the ram. Other than the ram being faulty, your CPU *may* be overheating, but that's unlikely because the AMD XP Mobile's are VERY efficent. Let us know how the RAM test goes, and we'll take it from there. Good Luck!