It took me about 6 years of building my own systems to get a ''feeling'' of what was caused by buggy code, and what was caused by crappy hardware. Random crashing & rebooting & lock-up are signs of crappy hardware. A few rules for you if you built that system: 1) Repalce the CPU fan. Do this more often than you change oil on your car, they make those fans as cheap as f%#$ing possible. They operate at full capacity for about 2 months. (Not sure about athelon fans yet, just got one a little while ago - they spin fast! I actually cut my finger open...) 3) External Cooling Buy a small fan (~1ft in diameter), open the case, blow Case fans suck just as much as CPU fans 2) Do not Over-clock Many people have ''success'' stories for immediate results, ask them again in six months... 3) Underclock I''ve had a few crappy MB''s (and some RAM) that didn''t do 100MHz very well, step down to a 66Mhz bus speed (you can up the multipler to get back near you''re cpu''s actually speed, don''t go over! - I hated doing this too, but I stopped crashing) 4) Check Voltages Make certain you have the core & IO voltages on the MB set properly 5) Unconditional Format If you decide to re-install windows, Format the entire HD with the /u option. If it makes bad noises while formatting, call the manufactor and get a warrenty replacement if you can. (that 800MB is probably too old... a 4GB drive should be at the edge of its warrenty now - depends some are 1year some are 3year) One bad sector leads to another, and windows does not handle newly-gone-bad sectors (NT server might, netware does...) 6) Reboot Reboot after installing _any-one-thing_ even if it doesn''t say too. The SB Live!, & SB TNT2 v2.0 drivers didn''t not work on my system together... one thing at a time to find out what causes it to crash or lock-up. 7) Windows 2000 I''ve had a lot of stability problems with win98; I had to turn off cursor acceleration on one machine running w2k; otherwise it''s worked much better. (Make sure drivers exist for all your stuff first, and WQHL certified is always a good thing) Advice for future purchases: I''ll never buy from a trade-show again. I got screwed by buying a crappy ASUS mb from a trade-show, they only had a week return policy, it took me two weeks to determine the MB was bad (I was busy, I didn''t work on it for two weeks ). I haven''t been able to successful contact ASUS for a replacement either... There''s no good national chain to buy parts from, CompUSA sells old stuff at today''s component prices. I''ve never bought online, ''cause when I''ve been in the mood (or need) to buy stuff I''ve wanted (or needed) it _now. Try to find a franchise (Computer Builders Warehouse is one near me), their prices will be a littler higher than the trade shows or online, but you can easily return or exchange it.

My dad would always try to buy the cheapest possible computer. The sub $1000 ones. Now they are more common, but he would always try to get the best possible perfomance for his money. End perfomance: half the stuff was faulty. I was left with fixing it.

I agree with Magmai Kai Holmlor, don''t buy from trade shows. My dad bought a computer from some place, and paid to get a new case, and have them put everything in the new case. He bought a full tower case for $70. They ripped him off. Then I looked inside and they didn''t even get long enough cables. The case came with lots slots in the back for almost every kind of connector. They used the ISA slots because most of the cables weren''t long enough, but some where.

Here are somethings I have found to fix a computer when it has major problems:
Make sure all of the cards are in right. I had one case where the piece in the case where the cards go wasn''t perpendicular to the motherboard. It was pulling out the cards.

Next, if your computer freezes a lot, or has blue screens, put your finger on all of the big chips recently after the computer overheated. Sometimes some of them need an extra fan.

If your computer starts crashing after about a year or so it could be because of the dust. You''ll notice if you don''t change the parts in your computer a lot there will be dust everywhere. Your computer will do fine with some dust, but when the dust builds up enough to start bridging connectors, or cakes up heat sinks then it needs to be cleaned out.

Most general problems meaning that somethings things work, but every once and a while some random component will fail, are caused by the motherboard. So if all else fails make sure you don''t have a bottom of the line motherboard.

Rule 7 sucks. Change that to Linux.

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A wise man once said "A person with half a clue is more dangerous than a person with or without one."

I''ve never had a problem at a computer show; I always find the prices to be much better then retail.I don''t want to start an argument, but why did you buy anything with a 1 week return policy? Most vendors at shows are honest guys, and will cooperate with any defective product returns.
Actually, I wouldn''t expect much from the ibm guys, and every show I''ve ever been to has at least one grop of them.They steal anything that isn''t tied down from work and sell them at the shows; everything covered in dust, everything 3-5 years old (or older).I have to laugh at them, on either side of them are guys selling 800 MHz machines, and they''re sitting there with like PC jr, and 486 motherboards
Rule 7 does suck, everything works better under linux

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meh