Hi everyone, I'm new *blush*... This is my first post to a techical forum on any topic aside from modding games, usually I call or fix it myself.

I've built this pc but I dont' always have a good memory so bear with me.

I built the machine several years ago but upgraded last year. I've been running vista (32x)Home Premium on it.

I have 2 gig ram, dual core cpu (2.66GHz Intel x2). NVIDIA 7300 GX video card.

The freezes started about 11/19/07 whilst I was in media player (updates had installed earlier that day or day before? for Microsoft but I have gotten rid of the record due to having problems installing the netframework update) When it first froze I had to cold reboot. Then I got my first error, one of what seems 4. Winload.exe corrupt, registry missing or corrupt, unexpected i/o error, wdf01000.sys (critical system driver missing or corrupt). I have ran repair and it seems to occasionally work but I don't think that's the case. I think it's a coincidence if it starts after running repair. If I play with it (meaning everytime it asks me to hit enter to start windows normally) it will sometimes eventually load windows. Especially if it is turned off and I wait a bit. Sometimes it still does it even if I wait.

It seems quite random. I ran a test on it and it stated (though I read it's 50-60% accurate) that my hard drive was going to fail soon, value was true, as well as it being a dirty drive..

I've spent countless hours with Microsoft (you know , the guys over in India that you have to have repeat nearly every sentence) with more than one representative and they tried but the most they accomplished was running repair, removing my selective startup items (making me go back and stop some annoying ones from starting up like quicktime update, etc) and cleaning up my temp files (which is done automatically every month anyhow).

Yesterday I noticed my cmaudio.sys driver was only a 2003 driver for xp so I attempted to update it since "The Sims 2" was freezing now also and that has never happened. I had had some errors of sound in the game throughout so I thought maybe it was connected. I had a crash whilst I was installing the update for the sound, right in the middle of it then again in settings after reboot, then it wouldn't reboot again until today. The driver apparently was accepted and seems nice for my sound but the problem is still here, I know it is as I told Microsoft after they closed the case due to not being able to get the problem to happen at command. It's too random..

I honestly think it is either my hard drive failing (doubt but maybe) or that my pc is overheating (I really think this one) because I've seen 59* C upon bootup in bios under hardware monitor. It was that temp after rebooting.. Can't imagine what it was during the use of a program before it crashed.

I think I have a faulty pin on my cpu fan but it's never caused problems before, including earlier this year. I had had a tech install it and I think they fudged it up a bit.. So much for all these specialist (not you guys). I've even had someone call my case a cpu!! I told her it was a case and the cpu was inside, she argued til I showed up and I pointed ot the cpu and said "This is the cpu" and she said she was testing me.. haha.

So, I'm hoping someone here will have knowledge about pc's and verify my thoughts here before I go buy another sound card/hard drive/cpu fan. Though I'm thinking of doing the fan anyhow, it's seemingly a good idea to be on the safer side. There's 4 pins total on the fan. One is messing up.

The fans spin at about 2500 rpm's, case and cpu.
cpu is a bit slower than the case but I'm thinking they're all made different.

I've set the alert to about 1500, if it slows it should warn me.

I have also had lock ups trying to run scan disk since the crash, it aways stopped on one of the higher levels, like level 4 or 5 about half way through, different point each time til I gave up and canceled it.

It also took hours to run. I have a 300 gig hard drive, maybe why? It's a SATA so it's always got the "safely remove hardware" icon near my clock.

Any more information you guys need? I tried to cover everything I've done and tried and that has happened.

Thanks in advance and hope I've not offended anyone,
XTS