ready to give up (lockups are fun)

I'd like to say thank you to everyone in advance for the great help I've received here in the past and I'm sure I'll get the same in the future.

The problem I'm having is an odd one. it started as my computer locking up while my girlfriend was playing World of Warcraft. It was a total lockup and the only way to recover was a hard reset. It wouldn't freeze in stress tests or memtests or even crysis worked flawlessly on max settings. Then i installed fallout 3 which consistantly froze seconds into the opening sequence (your birth woohoo!). So i resorted to a fresh install this time deciding to dual boot xp and 7. From this i learned the problem seems to only exist in windows 7. In xp I can burn dvds no problem with nero 9. in 7 (tried nero 7 and 9) it freezes while transcoding. however my games dont seem to freeze in 7 anymore (they still could i havent really done much extensive testing since the new install.

Any advice is welcome.

GW2,
Suggest you consult the MS compatibiility list.
Download details: Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals

That's a strong suggestion!

nevermind me it just froze in xp too. I think its got something to do with memory. ill do that karlsnooks

GW2,
CPU-Z http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpuz/cpuz_153_setup.exe
Gathers info on your CPU, Motherboard, Memory, System
CPU: Name, number, Core stepping and process, Package, Core voltage
Internal and external clocks, clock multiplier, cache info
Mainboard: Vendor, model, revision, Bios model and date,
Chipset (northbridge and southbridge) and sensor
Graphic interface.
Memory: Frequency and timings, modules specification, vendor,
serial number, timings
System: Windows and DirectX version.

Memtest86+ 4.00 http://www.memtest.org/download/4.00...+-4.00.iso.zip
Comprehensive memory test program

ok so it says fallout 3 is not compatible. which makes no sense to me seeing as it runs fine on several of my friends windows 7 computers. nero still freezes and it still froze before i installed fallout.already did the memtest 86+ no errors found. ill do it again though just to be sure.

be sure to run cpu-z.

This will let you know if all your memory is created equal. This info is under a tab called SPD if I recall correctly.

heres the cpu-z report and a screen of the spd page. slots 3 and 4 say the exact same thing. off to run memtest now! brb

Okay. It ran 1 full cycle and passed then locked up at 33% through the next cycle so i rebooted and it froze again at 14%. i'm stumped. does that mean its memory?

GW2,
Extremely possible that ram is source of the problem since the ram failed the test.

Ram is reallly cheap nowadays. Just be sure to get the correct type and speed for your computer. Safest is to replace all ram with new ram that meets the manufacturer's requirements. Also at the same time, be sure to get the max amount of memory possible.