1. Make sure you have all Windows Updates installed
2. Make sure you have the latest motherboard chipset, video, and sound drivers installed
3. Scan for viruses and spyware
4. Check for dead/dusty fans and other signs of overheating
5. Make sure all cards, CPUs, memory sticks, power connectors, data cables, etc. are securely connected/inserted
6. Run registry cleaners
7. Uninstall all software that you don't need
8. Scan hard drives for errors and defragment them

It's also possible that your power supply is flaky.

Also, open up your system properties (alt+Pause), go to Advanced->Startup and Recovery and uncheck Automatically Restart. That will give you a blue screen of death instead of a reboot so you can hopefully narrow down the problem.

You should also be able to view the crash data for old crashes within Event Viewer, by going to Start > Run and typing in "eventvwr.msc", then clicking on "System" in the left panel.

DO NOT DO #6. BAD HUNTERZ. Registry cleaners do BAD SHIT to systems. The ONLY one that works reliably is Norton WinDoctor.

I use CCleaner and have never had problems, but I keep WinDoctor around as a backup. If it makes you happy, Snover, I will amend #6 to:

6. Run a reputable registry cleaner

Thanks! Such a long list... mayube I'll just put up with the reboots 😀 But seriously, those are sme seriously good suggestions. Some I already do, some are hard to do (for reasons), others I will look into right now. Thanks again.

Some people might think that iolo Registry Mechanic is reputable, but I've seen it screw up more systems than any other.

All the things on that list (except maybe #5) are actually things you should already be doing regularly to keep your computer healthy.

Just thought of another one:
9. If you're overclocking your CPU, video card, etc., try returning them to stock speeds/voltages to see if it helps stability

Snover wrote:

DO NOT DO #6. BAD HUNTERZ. Registry cleaners do BAD SHIT to systems. The ONLY one that works reliably is Norton WinDoctor.

Ditto on that!

I have made myself a runnable stand-alone version of norton WinDoctor that even fits on a floppy (1.2MB). It's very handy for repairing damaged registries without having to install the cumbersome Norton Utilities.

NSW will allow things to run from CD.

Norton is a bloated piece of crap, and every component it contains has a superior competitor out there (some of which, like CCleaner, are free). The only thing I regularly use from NSW now is Norton Antivirus (NAV), and that's only because I'm too lazy to check out the competitors. The price I pay for using NAV is having at least 5 services/helper apps running constantly in the background (well, 5 that show up in Task Manager anyways - god only knows how many other are hiding out) using over 17MB of RAM, and that's with all automatic scanning disabled (I just run a weekly scan on the windows task scheduler). Of course, running NAV from the CD would be silly since you really need the latest updates.

I use CCleaner instead of WinDoctor, O&O Defrag instead of SpeedDisk (oh my god, there's NO comparison!) - with a copy of PerfectDisk for boot-time defrags (I think Outertech or Sysinternals or one of those has a usable freeware alternative)

tolworthy: sorry about jacking your thread. It's all Snover's fault, really.