Hi guys,
Thanks for the responses. I think i've figured out my problem. The m'board is dying, well the highpoint raid controller is at least. I installed win 2k and got the same thing happening, (random crashes when using the internet). I checked the eventviewer and found errors saying the raid controller didn't respond within the timeout period. And just recently, even if I shut the machine down normally I have to rebuild my mirror raid array as the controller reports that it wasn't initialized last time. I can't remember the exact message, but it was something like that. Luckily I haven't lost any data, but have decided to buy another m'board with raid and see if that solves the problem. I will of course be doing a fresh install of win xp. I'll post back if i have any other probs.