[Zogthetroll]

well, the problem isn't exactly fixed yet, but my pc is running a little faster thanks to the ram upgrade. I tried disableing the automatic reboot, but it still shut down windows so i had to reboot manually then, so I set it back. I ran adaware and found one or two things lurking on my system (interesting side note, my wife was complaining about the slow lab computer at work and popups on it, so I ran adaware and found OVER 450 items, including cookies, on that machine, wow) but no change after squashing them, so its looking more and more like its hardware related, possibly the mobo. once i've got more money, i'm going to build a server for backing up files, acting as a firewall, web host, etc. so what i'll probably do at that point is get a micro-atx to replace the current mobo, and use those parts for the server, and get my own pc upgraded. basically, just living with the problem until then. thanks for all the helpful hints so far.

quote- "my computer doesn't have bugs, it just devolops random features." *sigh* how true it is.