Computer Problem/crashing

[Yata89]

Since I got my PC I've had nothing but crashing, 3 things usually happen;
What ever game I am in crashes and vista does that stupid grey out thing
The OS kicks me to the BSOD and pc restarts
or the most common one, the pc 'freezes' as in I cant do anything apart from hard reboot it.
I have one or two programs for measuring core temp but there doesnt seem to be any problems, usually ideling at 33 and maxing in the 40's.
This is my specs:

Jeantech Storm 700 watt power supply
ECS Elite Group P965T-A (V1.0B) motherboardp
Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 processor 2.13Ghz
2048MB DDR2 667Mhz RAM (8Gb supported - 4 slots, 2 free)
Sapphire HD 2900 XT

 

[eyeCpc]

Video... drivers... especially if you are running the Catalyst 7.9! If the software/driver disk was used that likely sees the 7.9 version there. The 7.10 cleans everything up fast and the 7.11 is out already. Grab the latest and let that remove the older catalyst since the patch for the 7.9 is useless.

 

[WarrenX]

Video... drivers... especially if you are running the Catalyst 7.9! If the software/driver disk was used that likely sees the 7.9 version there. The 7.10 cleans everything up fast and the 7.11 is out already. Grab the latest and let that remove the older catalyst since the patch for the 7.9 is useless.

Eye is right, try the drivers, also check the rails on ur 12v, finally, if all else fails then [Disclaimer: the following advice is highly dangerous and the person giving the advice is subject to no blame or prosecution:] wipe ur CMOS. <<<<<really risky, last resort.

 

[eyeCpc]

In Vista when a game locks and you hit the "ctrl-alt-del" key combination the options on that blue screen allow you to either shutdown or bring up the task manager to end the game itself and return to the desktop after. Did you assemble the build or have someone else do that for you?

 

[Yata89]

I have the latest catalyst drivers, when the game crashes it just kicks me to desktop, this happens with nearly every game but at least I can restart it, when the whole computer freezes not even the three fingered salute helps.

 

[Fibzx]

Your 3d clocks are messed up. I have had very bad experiences with saphire as well, I had the same problem. I had to buy a new card.

 

[eyeCpc]

Something something isn't right. From what Ive seen in Vista so far it does offer better crash control and far fewer system locks then XP does. That's one plus for Vista there.

After bringing up the task manager I can always get back to the desktop and see no lockups. For having the 7.10 or 7.11 on and not the 7.9 that saw problems Fibzx is probably onto something about that brand of card. The MSI HD 2600XT is presently in use here without any seen on both XP and Vista.

 

[Yata89]

The sort of crashes I most frequently get are the entire system just freezes, you can move a mouse or do anything, the computer needs manually turned on and off

 

[eyeCpc]

With 2gb of memory installed one thing you could try to see if one dimm was bad would be popping one dimm out and running on the other. If the system runs good while slower you have a bad dimm.

Without seeing high temps overheating can be ruled out. Since this has been constant since first putting the build together you may be looking at a hardware problem like a bad bios eprom or need to see the bios updated in order to reflash the programming there. Or the memory timings may be playing a role somehow.