Frustrated after a few weeks of fighting this freeing problem, I formateed the drive aqnd reinstalled Windows. For now I'm running with the
drivers put in place by the Windows installer. Installed MS Security Essentials for Anti-Virus.
Left all settings at their defaults...now to wait and see what develops. I'll post again in the morning with an update.
Woke PC up this morning and everything seemed fine. then about 5 minutes later it froze up again. Rebooted and set Memtest86 running, to retest memory as a possible cause.
Edit:
with all that's been done/tested/installed/reinstalled, I see this as either:
1. A bad windows install CD - since this was a clean boot situation, with no 3rd party applications or services. If so,how do I get a replacement CD ?
2. A hardware problem. Assuming the memory is good (It had no errors after 2 passes, I had to leave at that point), what's next? I've tested the HD before, with CHKDSK and HD-Tune. Is there a way to isolate the motherboard or PSU? Or should I just send it all back to the vendor and have them deal with this?