05-07-2009, 12:01 PM
Do you get a lot of Blue Screens of Death and program crashes? You said some programs don't run. As in they won't start, but the computer keeps running? Or they'll be running and close/crash?
My next guess is that you have RAM issues. If you have access to a CD burner, download MemTest86 and burn it to a CD. (If you want a better, all purpose CD since MemTest is very small and you feel guilty like I do about using a whole CD for it, you can get Hiren's Boot CD which has MemTest86 and a bunch of other nifty stuff.
Reboot your computer and boot from the CD. You may have to change the boot order in Setup. (Usually the "Delete" key when you're booting, but sometimes it's different. Watch the messages when the computer's booting.) Once you boot from CD, run the memory test and see how many errors it finds. It can take a while to run the test, but I'm expecting errors.
My next guess is that you have RAM issues. If you have access to a CD burner, download MemTest86 and burn it to a CD. (If you want a better, all purpose CD since MemTest is very small and you feel guilty like I do about using a whole CD for it, you can get Hiren's Boot CD which has MemTest86 and a bunch of other nifty stuff.
Reboot your computer and boot from the CD. You may have to change the boot order in Setup. (Usually the "Delete" key when you're booting, but sometimes it's different. Watch the messages when the computer's booting.) Once you boot from CD, run the memory test and see how many errors it finds. It can take a while to run the test, but I'm expecting errors.