ok... guess I'm sorta out of ideas other than starting to rehash everything.

Board seems good, ram good, cpu good, intermintent XP errors since re-install.

Did you look in Event Viewer for errors linked to the xp problems?

Any errors when it blinks & powers down? Does it re-start?

If so:

You can turn off the feature that instructs XP to autostart on system
failure. Right click on My Computer and select Properties->Advanced
Tab->Startup & Recovery section->Settings button->uncheck "Automatically
restart" Apply. This will give you a blue screen with info on it and you
will have to manually restart the computer. The info might give you an idea
whether or not the problem is hardware or software related.

rehashing?

what is this rehashing that you speak of?

- n

just meant doing what i was writing... going back to your 1st post & trying to put it all together again.

somehow to get an error message with a searchable context.

or to think of something overlooked.... etc.

these problems have occured ever since you re-installed xp?

did it work ok for any length of time?

other hardware or software installed that might be an issue?

on a hunch I went ahead and installed the windows memory testing diagnostic... and i recieved the following errors:

INVC: Failed
WinVC: Failed
LRAND: Failed

I presume that this means that one (or both) of my memory sticks are screwy.

Would this explain my problems?

Could very well explain problems.

The following is excerpted from pcstats article here:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1565&page=1

Beginners Guides: Diagnosing Bad Memory:
Bad Memory Troubleshooting:
Troubleshooting with multiple memory modules:

If you have more than one stick of memory in your system and you are experiencing errors, the next step is to determine where the problem lies. Any one of your memory modules could be faulty (though if you have recently upgraded your memory and started experiencing errors, common sense points towards the obvious culprit), as could one or more of the memory slots on your motherboard.

First step is to remove all but a single memory module (following the direction above) and retest. Test each memory module by itself in the same memory slot. If you get an error with only one of the modules, you have found your culprit. If you get an error with all of them, the problem likely lies with either the memory slot or the motherboard itself (possibly even the processor).

If you experienced no errors while testing each memory module by itself, but you did get errors when testing them all together the first time, there is the possibility than one of your other memory slots is defective. Try repeating the testing with single memory modules in the other memory slots on your board, until you find a combination that gives an error.

hey cool... thanks... that is pretty much what i was gonna do next.

i suspect that it is one of my new sticks of memory. Cause before i dropped that in everything seemed to be fine.

thanks for all your help guys... i will let you know how my memory diagnoses goes!

cheers