**** thing keeps crashing!!

[fastferret]

My new home built PC crashes intermittently. Sometimes in games, sometimes in explorer, sometimes in outlook etc.

Its driving me crazy.

Don't think it is temperature - generally no more than 51 deg.
Also thought 350W PS would do the job.

Perhaps bad RAM or IRQ conflicts? I dont know how to diagnose or fix either of these. Any help greatfully received.

AMD 1.4 266
Epox 8K7A M/B
2x Samsung 128 Mb PC 2100 DDR RAM
Elan Vital FSCUG9C-6 CPU cooling
Enermax EG365P-VE 350 Watt PS
Matrox G450 32Mb DDR Graphics
Soundblaster Live Value soundcard
LG 8120B DVD
LG 8x CD RW

[Triengle]

Intermittent errors are the worst. It looks like you got good components but even the best can sometimes fail. I usually guess ram, power supply, CPU and then mother board as the problem. And then there is always the software side.

Try the ram first. It looks like you have two sticks of Ram so try each one seperately and see if the problem goes away. Power supply can be checked for proper voltage with a multimeter, CPU's can sometimes be moved to other machines for testing and when all else fails Motherboard. Sorry if this is stuff you already know.

[Explorer]

When the computer crashes does it just lock up on you or do you get an error message dialog box? If so, what does that box say?

Although hardware problems can certainly cause crashes, the problem tends to be caused most frequently by software (driver) incompatabilities. In particular, although I don't have a SoundBlaster Live card, I have been reading a lot of posts here and elsewhere about it's software causing problems. It seems to be particularly true with computers using VIA chipsets.

I'd look into the motherboard manufacturer's website and Creative's to see if there is some sort of incompability that has been recognized and fixed with a patch, update, etc.