Windows Restarts During Large Apps. or Games

[Daron]

If I am running a program for a while or a game, all of a
sudden a blue screen comes up and says windows has occured
a fatal error or something of the sort, and then it tries
to explain what is going on the at the bottom it says its
dumping memory and it counts up to 100 then my computer
restarts? Any ideas of what might be causing this, I am
running an athlon xp 1800+, with 512mb ram, and a 32mb
video card, thank you

 

[Malke]

If I am running a program for a while or a game, all of a
sudden a blue screen comes up and says windows has occured
a fatal error or something of the sort, and then it tries
to explain what is going on the at the bottom it says its
dumping memory and it counts up to 100 then my computer
restarts? Any ideas of what might be causing this, I am
running an athlon xp 1800+, with 512mb ram, and a 32mb
video card, thank you

It's hard to say from Usenet, but 1) check for overheating by opening
the case and running open, observing all fans; 2) do a RAM test (I like
Memtest86); 3) look in Event Viewer for clues; 4) do a hard drive test.
Did the machine always have this problem? If not, what changed between
the time it worked and the time it didn't? Post back with more details
if you need more help.

Malke