Hi,
I have this odd recurring problem with my computer. I finally got cable internet a few months ago, and since I had dial up, the nVidia NAM drivers didn't screw anything up, until I got cable when it corrupted downloads and limited external (PCI) NIC/WNIC cards to a 200 kbps download speed (though they worked at 1 mbps on the same site in a different computer). So I reinstalled Windows (though I didn't reformat, because I cannot afford to lose all of what is on my drive). So, Windows is installed, and I don't install the NAM drivers because they suck, and it's faster on all cards and doesn't corrupt downloads, but, X-Chat couldn't stay connected, and it was really annoying. So, I changed the MTU settings in the windows registry to match what was in the router setup, and it seemed to help (though it does disconnect still, sometimes it's good though). Anyways, it seems, ever since I validated Windows, I have this odd recurring problem. It usually is happening or happens when I wake up to get on the computer (I leave it on, this is like 2-3 day periods of recurrance), or get home from school. The computer gets real slow, I can't use the internet (though it works everywhere else), and no windows application will work unless I close a program or something (used to be that I had to close Crazy Browser which was always on, and I think if I close IE7 now, it should be the same result (next)), then they would work. However, I still would have no sound, the driver randomly goes away. It is very strange. Now, two days ago, this problem occured, so I restarted, like always (which fixes it, until the next time), but this time, the computer just hung on the post screen. And it said my HDD was 137 GB instead of 250 GB, and just sat there... So I got upset, turned it off and went to school. When I got home, I started it up, and it was working again.
This problem is very strange, and scares me a bit. I'd actually rather have a computer not working at all then one that works randomly...