Random restarts and Much More

[BrooklynB]

I am having random restarts in addition to random program crashes (usually IE, Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and Dreamweaver MX). The programs tend to crash without warning – they just disappear!

This is getting worse recently since I added 512 RAM. But it was happening when I had 512 RAM. One tech told me I probably had motherboard problems. He suggested that perhaps the memory slots on the motherboard were the problem. Another said I should clean up the hard dive.

So I reformatted my hard drive, reinstalled everything. And the same things are happening.

Should I change motherboard? Or does anybody have another idea?

System:
Micron Millennia® Max XP
Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional Operating System Windows 2000
Processor AMD Athlon XP 1600+ 1.4GHz 1 CPU002096-00 link
Memory 2 512 MB DDR SDRAM
Hard Drive Seagate Snowmass 40GB ATA100 7200RPM 1 HDI001767-00 link
Video Card VisionTek NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 200 32MB 1 VCD001542-01 link
Motherboard Aurora - Gigabyte 7DX Motherboard with Integrated Components (Millennia® Max XP)

[Dark_Omen]

Is it the system that crashes or the programs that crash. There are three things that I can think of that might be the cause of the problem.
1. Bad Ram
2. Bad MotherBoard
3. Bad Power Supply

[BrooklynB]

Both the system (sometimes) and the programs (sometimes).

[moderate_rock48]

Are you running 2 different speeds of ram(i.e. pc2100 and pc3200)?If so I would return the stick of ram you just purchased and buy the same speed of the original stick. Ram could be incompatible, kingston is a good brand. go to www.4allmemory.com they have a scanner to scan your computer and tells you which ram would be best for your computer.

[Dark_Omen]

But it was happening before he upgraded to 1gb of ram. Did u originally upgrade to 512mb from something, or is that the original amount of memory?

[BrooklynB]

But it was happening before he upgraded to 1gb of ram. Did u originally upgrade to 512mb from something, or is that the original amount of memory?

When I got the machine in 2001 it had 256 mb. In early 2002 I ugraded to 768. The problem started about 3 months ago (I had not yet made any changes). I updated to 1 mb about 2 weeks ago. It has steadily gotten worse.

[Dark_Omen]

How many slots do u have for memory?

Edit:
Nevermind about that question, I looked it up, it wouldn't be the problem I was thinking of.

Do u still have the original stick of memory. Try putting that back in and see if it still does the same thing.

[BrooklynB]

2 slots. I don't have the original any more.

[caperjack]

So, is the CPU heatsinc and fan clean of dust . ,maybe try someThermal grease n the cpu .
The powersupply fan clean ,pull the side of the case and leave it off to see if maybe staying cooler helps .
As you can see im thinking HEAT

[Dark_Omen]

You can put another fan in your computer if it is a heat issue. Also another reason might be your power supply has died. This happened to me it would shut off after a little bit because there was too much power that the computer needed to run.

[Danniboy]

im with caperjack, sumhow i dnt think its faulty ram, it sounds to me like ur ram is possibly gettin hot or its heat in some way that is causing it, another thing tht u could try (just to add sumthin else to ma post) is try disconnectiong peices of hardware and turn on ur comp without them plugged in at all, 1 by 1 like floppy 1st... then get the cd out, then any usb things, until solely the crtitical things are plugged in, becuase mabe, just mabe it could be a hardware problem, but somything tells me its heat...:confused:

Danniboy.