My old P3 600 cpu crashes from every program except internet explorer. It also stalls constantly. I couldn't figure it out, so I brought it to an expert I knew. We formated C drive and re-installed everything... 4 times, and it still booted from programs and stalled. So then I bought a new 600 board, thinking that might be the problem. It still booted and crashed. So then I gave up on it and bought a new cpu. 1 more thing...I got the bloodhound virus on that computer...maybe that caused damage to something that is causing it to do this?

the only viruses that can remain after a complete format are ones that attake the boot sector of your hard drive and you would know if it was one of those cause it wouldnt boot at all.You failed to mention your os but i will assume its win 95 or 98.It could be one of hondreds of things but I would say start with checking the temp of your cpu.It might be getting to hot due to a bad fan or even a heat sink cloged with dust.Please dont post back asking what temp your cpu should be.If you dont have the ability to go find that (hint:intel.com) then no one can help you. good luck and happy hacking :)

the os is 98. It isn't too hot. one time for kicks I installed starcraft when I was checking to see which programs it booted you out of, and it booted me during the LOADING! I didn't even get in the game. Sometimes you can't do anything with it...other than go on the internet...that works. Internet explorer works fine.

You need to start testing hardware peice by piece.If you have more than one stick of ram try each one independently.Try a different cpu,hard drive,Posibly even a bad power supply and or mouther board.

Agree with Wolfe, especially about the RAM. That's where I'd start...

work, work, work.... K, thanks. I'll see what I can do about it, cause we checked the power supply and its not overheating. Is there any "easy" way to check component by component?

Try pulling your sound/lan/ other cards and booting with the bare minimum needed for windows and try to recreate the problem. After that first thing I'd do is run a memory checker such as gold memory and then a full surface scan of your hard drive in scandisk - 2 most likely components to cause problems without keeling over and dying immediately are your ram and hard drive. After that I'd run a utility called toast or Sisoft Sandra's burn in overnight to confirm the CPU and mainboard are OK. If alls well then It's very likely to be a driver or maybe direct x issue in windows.............98 you say?.......good luck lol