This thing is the most fickle machine I've ever dealt with. I've been goin' nuts for months over this. You've heard it before. Random crashes in XP for no certifiable reason. Either it be during the screensaver, the desktop, or while running a game or using IE, it seems that this thing doesn't like anything. The only consistency to some of it's crashes are during "memory intensive" moments (burning something, watching a video, converting files, etc). During these, this thing either BSODs listing a random driver as the culprit, or just reboots altogether. Sometimes my memory will shoot up for a split second while say, scrolling on a webpage, and BAM... bsod... or reboot, again (I have the auto-restart on system failure turned off, in case you're getting ideas). Sometimes it says the IRQs are not less or equal, but that's crap... I've checked myself. It isn't overheating, this babys got 4 fans... all checked out (plus, the hottest the cpu ever gets is half of what my pc is set for critical). All audio and video drivers are up to date. Power supply is sufficient too. Tried running on just 1 stick of ram, twice, and it still happened BOTH times. I'm at my wits end, and before I load the gun, I thought I'd throw this one out there and see if anybody can give any reasonable excuse or solution that I haven't already heard. Beggingly yours.

Hate to say this but could be bad ram, do you have another PC that is working fine that you can switch RAM to check? Also from what you stated you have updated the BIOS right? Make sure if you do that you reset it prior to flashing. The other problem may be an IRQ conflict make sure none of your cards sound/video/modems/nics share an IRQ if you have a pci modem in a certain slot pull it uninstall and see if your problem is corrected if so Viola IRQ problem.

Gee, you think it could be XP? It's a crappy OS and right now there's no getting around that. I'm not a Microsoft basher, but I am a bad software basher, no matter who's it is. Larry

Could be XP too. These type of problems are always the hardest. I recently made the leap from 98 to XP Pro. To be honest with you seawatch XP is not too bad, but it is best to to a fresh install and do a preload good old DOS 5.1.2600 prior to loading XP, it helps for an old DOS dog like myself. I have to say one thing about XP it sure is a memory hog, but for me has been stable as a rock. I guess I will find out after a few months..... (I still have my Windows 98SE CD.........just in case.....lol

Opinions and experiences vary. I've been running XP for over a year on a stock HP Pavilion with a P4 and a meager (but adequate) 256MB of RAM. Some programs on the drive are quite memory intensive. That said, I've never had the first crash. Not one blue screen. The only tweaks I've made are turning off some items in Administrative Services. No way I'd go back to an earlier Windows operating system. 8-) Solarian

I guess I should agree. But doing support on XP can problematic. One time the printers just diappeared from the printers folder. Another, the network connection was gone. The people thought I was nuts. But I guess Win98 had it's problems when it came out also. Larry