Hi there,

Having some pretty serious problems with my PC.

Firstly, things started taking ages to load. Then it started rebooting randomly, so I turned off the 'Automatic Restart' in XP. Then I start getting lots of BSODs.

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON-PAGED_AREA

That sort of thing, which from looking round the net is a fairly common problem. Some of the reasons I've seen cited for this include:

* CPU overheating
* Bad RAM
* A faulty ATI video driver
* Spyware.

As far as the faulty driver and Spyware are concerned, I'm doubtfull.
I regularly run spyware checks, and the machine in question has not been on the net for about a year. Also, it's worked fine for 2 years with the current drivers etc. However, 2 days ago I packed up and brought it to Uni, and it is then that the problems began. This makes me wonder if it could possibly be damaged in transit.

I checked the CPU at idle yesterday and it was at about 65 degrees. I played a demo of SWAT4 which took a really, really long time to load, far longer than it used to - we're talking several minutes. The game ran fine, so I restarted the PC as I thought that would be a good test of the CPU and straight after running the game the temperature was in the 80s and the CPU fan at approx 2700 RPM. I imagine this is pretty hot...

Opened the PC this morning and cleaned the dust off the fan and heatsink, and after running games the CPU was now at about 65C. Whilst I didn't come acoss a BSOD in my (brief) test this morning, the game took even longer to load so I'm pretty sure the problem still exists.

Now, one thing that I find really weird is that I was lieing in bed the other night and the PC appeared to turn itself on without warning. I thought I was going mad but I'm pretty sure this happened. This, and a few other things, has made me question the power supply, but I'm not sure it could cause those BSODs?

Anyway, the spec is:

AMD Athlon XP 3000
512 MB of (cheap) RAM
A cheap 230V Power Supply
ATI Radeon 9550
Soundblaster sound card, apologies, can't remember the exact one


So, do you think it could be down to CPU cooling, Bad RAM, a bad Power supply or a software issue?

I'm thinkign of doing the following:

Getting a new power supply
Getting a new CPU fan and heatsink
Another system fan
If nothing else works, some new RAM.

Let me know your thoughts and if anyone knows of any good diagnostic software I can download(memory tests etc) please post a link :-)