Well I have my new motherboard and processor set in and I haven't crashed anymore. However, whenever I go into the Start Menu and select Shut Down, the menu just goes away and the computer freezes. The mouse cursor looks as if it's waiting for something and I don't even get a menu with choices to Shut off, Restart, or Log Off. What could be the problem? I've also noticed that my KOTOR II game loads up corrupted. The game runs as if I'm using a 266mhz processor and its menus do not load up properly. My AVG Free has also been becoming corrupt, I had to reinstall it 3 times last night and I bet once I get home and check on my computer, it may tell me to reinstall again.

Well, I just turned on my computer. As luck would have it, I'm also unable to activate my XP, my installation ID is not valid according to Microsoft's stupid automatic phone activation. I decided to see if it still freezes when you try to shut down. I select Start Menu -> Turn off your Computer and it just freezes up. I'm forced to do a hard restart and when the desktop loads up, I get another "AVG installation is damaged. Please reinstall" message. However, now Start Menu won't crash.

I think they're related, AVG and the freeze-up, but the question is, how do I fix it? Without AVG Free, I'm left without protection.

Heh, I solved it by switching to Avast. System 100% stable now, I can Shut Down as many times as I want

Now I just need to solve the KOTOR II issue. It's not a dual-core friendly game, but I have 3 steps that I can try, one of them including an Intel dual-core patch, just like AMD.

Beautiful, I fixed the KOTOR II issue! Setting its affinity to CPU 0 didn't help so I downloaded the latest beta Nvidia drivers, 93.31. They have support for dual-core PCs and things are just perfect now!

lol, sorry about wasting space here

Not wasted at all. We are learning thru your trials and errors.