I just built this system over the weekend. Recently since installig a used hard drive from a friend this problem has seemed to kick up, though since I have only had the computer for a few days it's difficult to attribute the blame to the hard drive. My computer will lock up randomly whenever I am doing something "labor intensive" such as viewing a webpage AND (get this) listening to MP3s at the same time(GASP, I know how dare I?)! This is a total lockup, no mouse movement available, and a hard reset is required. The first thing I did was replace the CPU with a spare 233 I had. Nothing! Secondly ere is my second concern. The b---tard 10GB Quantum hard drive off an old Pavilon would not be recoginized by the BIOS when the jumpers were set to Slave, or Master. The only way I could get to work was Cable Select. I am using a single lead IDE connector on the drive, and I have tried other IDE cables. The BIOS registers the hard drive as Primary Slave, not master! It runs, but I thought this might be a problem? My last posibble thought was the RAM. I have one PC100 64MB module, and two 32MB either PC66/100 not sure, modules. I noticed the 64MB module is really warm when I opened the case and the 32s are cold. Cheap RAM? Bill

it might be defective ram to casue your system to randomly locks up. did you update all your drivers? such as sound card and video card.

Upgraded Nvidia TNT2 Drivers. Sound card...it's a real old ISA, could there be any chance of newer drivers? It's from a pre-built Windows 95 system, it would seem I already have the best drivers. This didn't seem to happen with old drive, but then again, my old hard drive I only had for 2 days before I got the 10GB. RAM, dunno maybe. Only locks up when running multiple tasks, doesn't lock when I leave it on overnight sometimes to download movies and stuff.