First of all, my computer is about 4 months old specs -

Amd 3800+ Dual Core
1GB (2x512mb) Samsung ram
160GB Western Digital Drive (previously seagate)
Asus M8N-E Mobo (non sli)
Evga Nvidia 7600GTS

About 1 month after getting the computer, it would randomly freeze, forcing me to manually restart and greeting me with "Disk read error" messages. It would do this even 30 minutes into a fresh reformat (NTFS), and I've had many computer's before (on XP) and never this problem before.

The shop, replaced the Seagate with a Western Digital HD and upgraded the BIOS to help prevent video memory corruption (?) and said my problems should be over. But, now, 4 weeks later, my game (Natural Selection) freezes, forces me to restart manually, and presents "Disk read error" messages.

What can cause this ? I only have a few Steam installed games (CS, CS:S, DoD, DOD:S, Hl1, Hl2), Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Battlefield 2, a large selection of movies, and thats it. My drivers are updated (video card, sound, mobo) and i hadn't recently installed anything (within 24hours).

Is it a fault of the NTFS file system ? Should I reformat into FAT32 ??

Definitaly not a good idea to fat32..

could be various things..could be 2much HEAT on the hd !!

How's the aeration in your box.

The aeration is good. The front of hte case is metal mesh (perforated metal) and the back has several vents... Centurion Case fans... everything runs normal temps, even the vid card heat level rarely moves in Nvidia monitoring.

The computer is build by a local shop (as a entry gaming machine) and has withstood multiple 24 hour runs on 3dmark with no problem. I can't see heat being an issues if its this rare / spadoric on the symptons.

Why is it a back idea to FAT32 it in WinXP ?

Why is it a back idea to FAT32 it in WinXP ?

This is a C&P:
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NTFS is the recommended file system for computers running the Microsoft Windows XP and Windows .NET Server operating systems. NTFS offers many end-user benefits related to functionality, security, stability, availability, reliability, and performance. NTFS, which was originally introduced with Microsoft Windows NT® 3.1, has always provided advanced file system features such as security, transacted operations, large volumes, and better performance on large volumes. Such capabilities are not available on either FAT16 or FAT32
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besides, i never heard of anyone having problems with a decent pc, and fixing it by going Fat32.