Have a brand new XP box(AMD 1800+, 512M RAM, 40G HD, DVD, CD-RW, 10/100) with WXP Home. At varying intervals, from 3 minutes to 3 hours a complete lock-up will occur, without seeming regard as to the activity. Could be while web surfing, listening to music or simply browsing the Windows Help section, with nothing else open. I've reviewed a number of other posts here and do not see a similar situation. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance! Joe

Try "clean Booting" your system. Does it still lock up? If so you are probably looking at a bad driver or hardware problem. If not, it's a 3rd party app or service causing it. Use MSConfig to narrow down which app or service is causing it and uninstall it. See: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q310/5/60.asp for more information about using MSconfig to troubleshoot problems.

I also experience the irregular lockups frequently and cannot solve it - I have no software installed as I just installed win xp. I did try to use my motherboard's "optimized" bios setup and upon rebooting (and just prior to another crash), XP indicated there was a problem with my TNT driver. Having used XP's TNT driver, I'm at a loss of what to do. My system consists of: windows xp Athlon XP 1800+ soyo Dragon+ 512 MB ram cd-rw 40 gig hd diamond viper 550 - nvidia riva tnt

MATT: The Windows XP TNT driver was the most current driver up to when XP was released. The driver is still provided by NVidia and there is some known issues with it. Update to the latest Detonator drivers. Also, What chipset is your mainboard?? If you have a VIA chipset be sure to get the latest VIA 4in1 drivers (I think 4.37 or better).

Hello Joe: Athlons run VERY HOT, and heat has caused problems like yours on more than one machine. Coincidentally, my brother called the other day with the same problem. Had him check CPU temp and it was still in a range AMD considers acceptable, but his apartment was very hot and he had the tower in a fairly closed in area (modular desk with enclosed cabinet for the tower, open on front but only a lot in the back for cables. So, I asked him..where did he expect the heat to go? The thing has specs similar to yours but 1GB ram. I also put a Dragon Orb 3 on the thing and used Arctic Silver thermal paste, which is fine if the heat has a place to go. He relocated the tower and all is well now. Anyway, check the HSF

Hi Troy, Thanks for the help! I'm using the Soyo Dragon Plus VIA KT266A motherboard. I'll look for both the VIA 4in1 upgrade as well as the detonator drivers. Thanks again - please let me know if anything else comes to mind! -Matt

I just bought a soyo dragon ultra motherboard and had to send it in for repair do not buy soyo it sucks especially the dragons who out of the blue start locking up and then lockup before you reach windows............ soyo people must die go to hell and have their families raped Such fools releasing the soyo dragon Ultra (black) without it actually working...