One of the pillars of good PC custodianship is ensuring all your gear isn't running out of spec, which can cause slowdowns, ...

Well, you have a problem. Might very well be heat related.<BR><BR>Your PC must pass the prime95 torture test in order to be stable, else it'll crash in other programs aswell.<BR><BR><BR>Try to see if ...

...without being run in Windows? I have a bootable USB drive with the latest Hiren's on it, and I'll be running memtest86+ overnight to test my RAM, but I don't know of any program for stress testing ...