[Ham-Computers] Computer reboots itself (insubordinant sucker)

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

Group,

My computer just rebooted itself when I closed a web page.  Blue screen with 
a bunch of white letters and writing.  The only thing I was able to read 
before the screen went black was "Page fault in unpaged area".  This is about the 
fifth time that this has happened with most of this hardware.  The previous 
times either I was too dumfounded and too slow to manage to read what was on the 
screen (it was only visible for about 2 seconds and I just happened to be 
looking at the spot on the screen where it was printed) or I wasn't in the room.

I assume, from the text, that it was a memory error.  But does anyone know 
whether the clue points to system board, CPU or memory?

Background:  OS is Windows 2000, all updates through yesterday.  About two 
months ago, I got tired of the idiosyncracies of the previous 930 MHz system 
board and bought a new Gigabyte board with a 3.4 GHz Intel CPU (matching fan, 
etc.), two 512 MB DDR Ram boards (couldn't use the 1.5 GB from the old board) and 
a new 350 watt power supply (previous one did not have the 4-pin 12 Volt 
cable).  Six EIDE hard drives, IDE CDRW drive, RAID controller, video board, PCI 
printer board, keyboard, monitor and tower case with its switches and LED's 
were carried over.  I did not like the Gigabyte board (BIOS problems in getting 
it to boot from the RAID controller, etc.) but that's neither here nor there.  
I finally managed to get all of the application software reinstalled and the 
machine back up.  About three hours later the machine rebooted itself.  I had 
my back to the monitor and only caught a glimpse of white letters on a blue 
screen before the screen went black.  That was Saturday afternoon.  On Monday it 
happened again twice.  Once, I thought it said what I wrote above.  I called 
Micro Center's help line but all that I got from them was that I would have to 
figure out whether it was RAM, CPU, system board or PS on my own.  On Tuesday, 
I went back and bought an Intel system board (PS was the cheapest but I 
couldn't see it causing a memory error, the other three were relatively close in 
cost, and I had developed a dislike for the Gibabyte board).  Installed it with 
none of the problems I had had with the Gigabyte.  About two weeks later, I 
left the room and when I came back, discovered that it had rebooted.  Tonight it 
did it again.

Any suggestions?  Which should I try next, RAM or CPU?  Other things being 
equal and with no clue, I'd opt for RAM.  If that isn't it, at least the 
additional 1GB can be installed, whereas a spare CPU can't do anything but sit in a 
box.  But I don't really need 2GB of RAM and would rather fix the problem in 
one more step.

Robert Downs - Houston
<http://www.wa5cab.com> (Web Store)
<wa5cab at cs.com> (Primary email)
<wa5cab at houston.rr.com> (Backup email)