[Day_late]

Got a new fan from Antec today and installed it. Mobo and CPU temps are fine (mobo 26C and CPU 21C). Voltages within specs (middle of range). Western Digital hard drive passes factory test program. Updated BIOS and mobo drivers today. There have been several BIOS updates from the one originally installed on my machine, and I'm now at the current version (updated about three weeks ago).

I've got three browsers because IE is required for some updates, Firefox has been my regular browser, and I'm trying Chrome. Usually only one up at a time.

Edit: I've got the computer up now, running Firefox, Chrome and Windows Media Player. All the voltages and temps are looking good. The fact that it's been up and running over an hour tells me the instability problem may be resolved. Your advice about BIOS and drivers saved me a lot of work.

Edited by Day_late, 14 May 2012 - 07:32 PM.

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so I'm thinking of replacing it with a 128GB SSD. Once that's in, I'll do a clean install of Windows, add software one program at a time, and give each program a day or so to show any instability. If there's an easier (or quiicker) way to do that, I'd like to know about it.

SSD is a good idea. When you buy and before installing, post back on this thread and we will give advice on setting things up. You have the right method for program installation, no real short cut if you want to be thoroughly, I always set a manual restore point before each alteration, providing you are using the rig for a couple of hours, no need to wait a week between installs.

If you think you now have a stable system, you should create an image of the OS drive and a recovery disk.
You can gain some performance increase by disabling some programs that start with window, like Office, Nero, etc, I create a short cut on the desktop first. Try then in the program setting to disable the, start with window, This Tutorial may help. > http://www.sevenforu...ams-change.html

You can run IE inside Firefox or Chrome, > http://www.ietab.net/home I have made Chrome the default browser.

If you do get any BSOD, note down what you were doing at the time.

Good luck.

[iammykyl]

so I'm thinking of replacing it with a 128GB SSD. Once that's in, I'll do a clean install of Windows, add software one program at a time, and give each program a day or so to show any instability. If there's an easier (or quiicker) way to do that, I'd like to know about it.

SSD is a good idea. When you buy and before installing, post back on this thread and we will give advice on setting things up. You have the right method for program installation, no real short cut if you want to be thoroughly, I always set a manual restore point before each alteration, providing you are using the rig for a couple of hours, no need to wait a week between installs.

If you think you now have a stable system, you should create an image of the OS drive and a recovery disk.
You can gain some performance increase by disabling some programs that start with window, like Office, Nero, etc, I create a short cut on the desktop first. Try then in the program setting to disable the, start with window, This Tutorial may help. > http://www.sevenforu...ams-change.html

You can run IE inside Firefox or Chrome, > http://www.ietab.net/home I have made Chrome the default browser.

If you do get any BSOD, note down what you were doing at the time.

Good luck.