Hello, im new here and require the assistance of pc experts on my problem as I have searched and searched for a solution but to no avail. Basically my pc will shut down quite randomly, most of the time when im playing games. It has only started recently and is not due to overheating because I have checked the temperatures and they are fine. Sometimes when it shuts down it can accompany a BSOD such as KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR 0X0000007A or MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION or KERNAL_DATA_ERROR. Also a few days ago it wouldn't recgonise the HDD and wouldn't allow me to log onto windows until I gave it some time. If not in a game, pc wont shut down for maybe 2 hours. In a game, Im lucky if I get 30 mins to play before shutdown.
I have Windows XP Home SP1
AMD athlon 64 3200+ 2.0ghz
Geforce fx5500 256mb
1gb ddr400 ram
Asrock 939A8X-M mobo

Thanks in advance.

Have you tried using Last Known Good Configuration?

One of the first things I would do is to install SP2, there are important security issues that this addresses, among other issues that M$ didn't get right at the time that XP was released.

I have had a problem when installing SP2 which causes a loop which doesn't allow me to log into my windows account so I have to keep SP1. Another thing, I have used memtest and it has detected no errors. I have used the last good configuration but that didn't help. I had to format a few days ago because when using system restore it shut down so corrupted the windows files. I have also scanned for spyware and viruses so I don't know what could be causing the problem

If the OS is that buggy I would wipe the drive...not format...partition the hdd with a 15 to 20 GB partition for the operating system and use the rest for files. This way if you ever need to reinstall the OS you don't have to mess with the files...unless the hdd is dead.

If you are going to go that route and you CD with you OS on it doesn't include the SP2 you might consider downloading Autostreamer and slipstreaming the OS and SP2 onto one CD.

Well Im not sure that the OS is buggy I think it may be a hardware problem.