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Okay, it just happened again and it's starting to irritate me. It does it at random times and for no apparant reason, like I'm not running any specific programs. Anyone have any ideas for what I should start checking??? Thanks!

Anything heating up? Check the temps to be sure all is in line.

If not heat related then it could be a driver issue, corrupted registry or a virus. Get the latest update for yoru av and run a full virus scan. If you don't have one then go here for a great free one.

If nothing shows up and it's not heat related, then I'd do a OS repair reinstall if you are using XP. No format yet, just run the repair thing.

I had that problem twice. Once it was bad ram, the other time it was a bad PSU, check those out as well

a friend had that problem with a psu. might give that a whirl

i had that happen to me my power supply was bad !
and before i figured it out i bought a new mother board
only to find out my gigabite mb was fine !
and the 500 power supply needed to be rma !
so between the mother board replacement and the shipping on the rma -i was out $75

I had the problem and it was a bad stick of RAM.

yup. had the bad ram thing here too

Yeah, I had a bad stick of RAM in this box and it was causing random reboots, took it out, no more problems.. eGo

Same here:
Bad ram stick
Defective mobo (Abit BF6...POS)

Random restarts can also be caused by a PCI IRQ channel sharing problem (this is NOT the same as an IRQ conflict, there are four PCI IRQ channels labelled A - D and all your PCI and AGP devices must share them). This problem does not affect ISA cards.

This problem is very common with NICs, some PCI sound cards (the SBLive in particular is VERY prone to it) and SCSI controller cards. These cards do NOT like to share a PCI IRQ channel I explain the problem in detail here with a fix: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9

Make a note of which slot each card is currently installed in right now. Pull ALL your PCI cards except the video card and boot up. Make sure the system is working okay. If the problem consistently happens when playing a game, run that game now and make sure it's okay (most games will run just fine without a sound card installed by-the-way).

If the system seems stable shut down and install ONE CARD AT A TIME. Start with the sound card as that's usually the prime culprit. Make sure that the sound card does NOT share an IRQ with any other device. If it does, or the system acts up, move the card to a different slot until it's resolved.

Repeat this process with all the PCI cards starting with the NIC card next if there is one.

Ideally you don't want any cards sharing IRQs with any other devices (not always possible though).

Do NOT go by IRQ assignments in Windows Device Manager. Win2K and WinXP on some mobos likes to put all devices on one shared IRQ and that's misleading.

What you want to do is check the IRQs that BIOS assigns. This is usually displayed briefly in a report display after POST. You may need to put a blank in the drive to force the computer to stay on that screen long enough to tap the PAUSE key to freeze it so you can read the IRQ numbers.

Other suggestions:
If you're overclcoking, don't until you resolve this. Overclocking can only aggravate the problem and will make it difficult to diagnose.

i had the same prob before

on my old 266 board, system would randomly restart. So i narrowed it down to either being the ram or the PSU.

After I RMAed one stick which I thought was bad, i then decided it was the PSU.

Swapped to a new PSU and mobo and havnt had any probs now

i had that problem to my windows was corrupt

Okay, now it is getting a little more serious. I have started to have problems with my Halflife randomly freezing and the comp is restarting more frequently. So now I'm guessing it is a problem with my RAM, but I don't really know where to start on getting the problem fixed. Any help would be most greatly appreciated.

PS, I removed one stick of RAM to see what would happen, and now my HL is coming up with an error and shutting down. PLEASE HELP!

Okay, first off read my post above about PCI IRQ sharing - it still sounds like that might be your problem.

Easiest way to check your ram is to use this EXCELLENT free utility:
http://www.simmtester.com/PAGE/products ... wnload.asp

Do what FP said, and if that doesn't fix the problem, I'd take the stick you took out and put it in, and take the stick you left in out. If it still happens, might want to check the psu eGo