lol well turns out that the computer techs couldn't fix it so my dad bought a new one. I just have a quick question. On the box it says that this PC has 512 MB of RAM, but my system specs says I only have 368 MB of RAM. Anybody know why this is? And I just want to thank everybody who helped me through this situation.

when you right click on mycomputer go to properties ,what does it show there ,it could be you have onboard video, it will be sharing you ram.

it just shows the regular system specs with it saying i have 368 MB of RAM. How can I find out if I have onboard video?

right click on blank area of your desktop/properties /settings /advanced /adapter .it should tell you hetre if its onboard or internal type .and how much ram it is /or sharing

368+128 doesnt really add up to 512. Can you list the display adapter it shows over there? Go to Device manager, and under 'display adapters' let us know what it says there. If indeed it is an onboard display, and is using only 128 megs, it is possible your RAM stick(s) may be bad.

You can try memtest86 to check your RAM. Download an ISO-CD-image from www.memtest86.com , burn it and boot up from that CD. The test may take a while, but doing this is a good idea with a new computer or RAM upgrades.

But I've tried to find out why those 16 MB could be missing:
The ATI Radeon Xpress 200 is a highly integrated chipset, which contains a cost-reduced version of the ATI X300 graphics processor. This seems to use 16MB "core RAM", in addition to the "shared" memory portion for the graphics. There are 2 flavors of that chipset and one comes without the 16MB embedded core RAM, reducing costs further. With this one, I guess the "core" RAM is borrowed from shared memory, too.

Upgrade to 1GB RAM or put a decent PCI-e graphics card into the free slot, when needed.

Hmm..didn't know about the 'Core RAM' thingy. If that is the case, then I guess all questions should be answered now.

So there's no way to like 'disbable' the shared memory featured or do something to get the RAM back? If it's not then I guess I'll just have to upgrade

You can change the amount of ram used by the video in the BIOS/Setup of the computer ,by entering the bios when you boot the computer .and making the desired change to the video section of the bios .

ok I know how to get the BIOS screen and all that but will changing the amount of RAM the video card uses cause any type of problems or for it's performance to degrade?

Yes ,the more ram the better you video will be .You should buy another 512 stick of ram and have it installed

ok well i was able to order some restore disks for my other computer. is it possible to switch the RAM out of that computer into the one I'm using now??

only if its the same type ,and i have know idea if they are the same ,as there are many different types ,and im not talking about brand name .

just to put a cat among the pidgeons i did a bit of research on that error message. from what i can see it seems to be something that was recently installed/uninstalled. have you put in new software recently and what microsoft updates have you added. .net 2.0can definitely balls things up.
check your event logs as far back as you can and see what was put in just before it started to go wobbly. you said your browsers were ok you can check your update history through microsoft update at the top of your all programs menu. and roll back by uninstalling those in your add/remove programs menu one by one, followed by any driver updates by going to device manager and "roll back driver" on any that were updated. you could also go back to a restore point at least a month before all problems started. if neither of those work then i would think of virus/spyware infection.
it is possibly a hardware problem but it sounds more like software to me but goldeneagle2005 gave you an accurate way to diagnose any faulty component. if it turns out to be hardware i'd suspect ram first. remove each stick in turn. if it stops crashing the bad stick is out.... Just looked above got there a bit late....didn't I