Computer randomly restarting, blue screen sometimes

[Guest]

Computer randomly restarting, blue screen sometimes

For the past few weeks, my computer has been randomly restarting itself.
Sometimes it's just a regular restart, other times I get a blue screen that
has messages, some of which are:

"IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"
"DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"
"PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA"

and sometimes reports of errors with files like "partcls.sys" I've done
research on the errors and haven't come up with anything helpful. Sometimes
it restarts after an hour or two of having it on, but other times it happens
more consistantly. It also happens in sleep mode. I checked the Event
Viewer thoroughly and nothing seems suspicious.

I am running Windows XP Pro with SP2 (which I didn't install until after
this problem began a month and a half ago). AMD Athlon 1800+, 1.54 GHz, 512
MB

Please help! Thanks in advance

 

[w_tom]

These are problems found in device driver defects or also in
hardware defects. You have a large number of suspects - the
number being limited significantly because your OS is NT
based; not Windows 95 based.

Procedure to methodically eliminate suspects and find the
problem are posted in the newsgroup
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt on 20 Dec 2004 entitled
"Computer freezes" at http://tinyurl.com/4tkqz . Solution is
a process of breaking the problem into parts, then analyzing
only those parts. Do not fall for the defective diagnostic
procedure called shotgunning.

Those error messages says that the executing code tried to
access memory it was not permitted to access - a safety
feature of pre-emptive multi-tasking OSes such Windows
NT/2000/XP. Look for something that would have caused this
program execution fault.