stumped in Michigan

[Booyah]

Specs: AMD 64 3000+, Gigabyte GA-K8NS, 1.024 GB Samsung DDR 400, Geforce FX 5500, 420w PSU, Windows XP Pro SP2.

When system idles it SOMETIMES crashes. only sometimes not everytime. it could sit for days and be fine, or u could go to the bathroom and come back it would have rebooted.

Also

sometimes when i install programs it crashes. again, not everytime. it may crash while installing a program only to reboot and you try again and it wont crash.

now then, lets talk about items i have replaced. CPU, MB, RAM, HD, OS, PSU, VC, and IDE cables.

i dont feel its a heat issue or it would crash while gaming as well.
not to mention i check pc health status upon reboot after crash and cpu is in the upper 20's to low 30's.

could this possibly be my case?? as its the only thing i havent replaced.

Ive cleared CMOS via jumper and battery removal too.

Ive flashed to latest version of BIOS.

also, RAM and VC are fully seated, as is all power and IDE Cables.

the case is original and so are the CD-ROM and floppy drives. thats all that is left. this system ran fine with no issues for 45 days then this all started. any ideas?

any help offered is appreciated, im stumped. (not to mention broke)

 

[Roshi229]

wow, sounds like a software issue to me... what os?

 

[Booyah]

windows xp pro sp2

 

[Roshi229]

i'm not sure how well you know software but try this... hope it helps.
if you don't know the registry, i would recomend using something like registry mechanic rather than going in yourself (remember always back up the registry before makeing any changes!!!)
http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/

and i would run an adware scan... something like Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Personal
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

try running a memory test
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

this is a microsoft reporting tool... it gathers a lot of information and creats a cab file containing txt documents, pick through these... it may point out a problem... or help you to narow it down
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...T_SETUPPerf.EXE

 

[Roshi229]

any updates? what happened... did it work!?

 

[My Tea Mouse]

Well to me it might sound like a hardware problem with the randomness of it all. Usually if it's software it'll crash when trying to do certain things everytime. At least this is my experience. You might wanna try to re-install windows. Hope you back-up.

 

[Booyah]

it turns out that all my motherboard drivers were not installed. i installed remaining drivers and i thought that fixed the problem. seemed to run ok for 24 hours however, i just got home from work and at some point between last nite and 2:15pm today, it rebooted.