Symptoms: Random shutdowns. Will shutdown in Safe Mode or Normal Mode. Has gotten slightly sooner in occurence as I've tinkered with it. Got real bad after installing SP2. The system is a stock HP 532W (el cheapo grande). So, that means there's a 150W PSU. Also, the HD has been pagefiling since day one. The screen goes blank, the CPU fan shuts down, but the power light stays on. It can be turned off by pressing and holding the power button for five seconds. The processor is running between 37 and 44 C. There's no corruption of the hard drive, so I don't think it's the motherboard. The only thing that will run and stay running on it is a Knoppix LiveCD. I could only get that to crash by piling on large apps until it just gave up. But, if I just run the browser or whatnot, it's good. With XP non-service packed, it would run for a while and then just randomly give up. With SP2 it almost never lasts long enough to get to the boot screen. For this reason, I almost suspect the RAM, rather than the PSU. But, I've really never seen a bad stick of RAM actually try to run a system. Usually, they report bad or just fail to boot altogether. Any input is more than welcome. I'd like to get a sense of what I'm dealing with before I go off dropping money and parts into a slightly obsolete system. Thanks. Thanks.

PSU most likely becaue processor is too cool to be overheating. Roger ASPIRE ATXB4KLW-AL Antec 400W ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe AMD 3700+ San Diego Corsair 1GB 2x512 eVGA 6600GT 250GB Hard Drive Sound Blaster Audigy Windows XP HOME W/SP2

"the HD has been pagefiling since day one" It doesn't help that you only have 128MB RAM, but virtual memory is always used, even if you have 1GB of RAM. You can try to optimize it, but I suggest you upgrade your RAM amount to 512MB first. http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm Have you tried testing your RAM with Memtest86? "With SP2 it almost never lasts long enough to get to the boot screen" If you're having probs getting to the boot screen, I doubt SP2 has anything to do with it...Windows hasn't even loaded yet. It sounds more like a hardware problem than software...one of the "big 3" like you listed: overheating, bad RAM, weak PSU. ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

I am working on have the exact same problem with an HP 532w. If anyone has fixed theirs, please let me know what the problem was. Thank You and Merry Christmas.

Found out what the problem is in my case. Faulty capacitors. Ran across this post http://www.lostcircuits.com/discus/messages/5/1371.html?1058815955 and checked my capacitors and they were leaking. I haven't yet replaced them or the board but this might be the problem.