Alright here we go, i've heard of similar problems like this before but no one's fixes seem to help me. I have run my system stable for over 2 weeks already, no reboots no nothing. But if I try to play a game that uses opengl I will get about 20-30 minutes of gameplay until my cpu usage spikes to 100% and I can't do anything except reboot. I have replaced my video card thinking that my generic geforce 2 wasn't able to handle a new gl extenstion or something but that is not the case. I have also tried taking out my soundblaster live which I know isn't the most stable sound card with xp and used on board sound. It's a no go. No matter what I try it locks up. Now here comes the interesting part. If i run half life, then control alt delete and set hl.exe to high priority I can play until there is a map change, then it spikes to 100%. That's how I've been playing in my clans matches hehe. But I would like a more permanent fix, anyone who has any input please let me know. System Specs Pentium 4 1.8 ghz o/c to 2.4ghz 512MB DDR333 Asus P4S333 Motherboard Gainward Geforce 3 TI 200 Soundblaster Live X-Gamer (yes I've tried everything underclocked)

You mentioned the hl.exe, I know that map changes in multiplayer games are RAM intensive, which leads me to believe you should recheck all of your ram settings in bios. Also allow your post to scan your ram (fast boot-off) and recheck your page-file/virtual memeory settings - or better yet, go to www.outertech.com and get cacheman for xp, where you can re-evaluate and customise your page-file settings, and while you're there pick up their cpu-usage tray icon, it may be helpful until you work this out, instead of using CAD all the time.