[Naurond]

I'm at the end of my rope here!  ??

I've got a MSI-6585 mainboard with the SiS648 chipset and a 2.4-P4.  I have a 60gb drive thats's maybe a third full and 512 ram.  I use a Radeon 9700 Pro and just about everything that uses graphics is locking up my system.  This has been constant for a couple months now, but my machine's nearly two years old.

First off, I keep my machine fairly clean, meaning I defrag, I erase clutter from Temp Internet and cookies too and I don't have loads of things running in the background.  I get all the Windows critical updates, and most of the other stuff unless it's specifically for something I don't use.  I use Adaware-6 to check for sneaky stuff, I've checked all the drivers for updates on video and sound as well as DirectX.  I don't add and remove tons of programs, and I know all my fans are working.

It may hang at any point in any game, and has now been happening in IE, and even on the desktop.  The system completely locks up, and the sound holds that tone it was at when it happened.  It might be after a minute of game play or a half hour, though recently it seems to be coming sooner.  I've tried running things in different compatibility modes, to no avail.

Sometimes Windows offers to report the problem to Microsoft, and so far it's only come back with a device driver caused the problem, but they can't say which one.

I recently tried re-installing Windows, after all the other things mentioned above, but that did nothing to help (or aggravate) the problem.  I'm not looking forward to formatting, but don't know what else to do.  I've searched a few tech forums, but can't find anything specific enough to help.  The only clue I've come across is a couple reviews I read mentioning that the SiS648 chipset is notoriously unstable... any ideas folks?  Why would it suddenly become so faulty after running for over a year?

[cremedies]

Try reinstalling or upgrading to the latest version of Direct X. Additionally, you may upgrade your video drivers or video card to see if that helps. Typically, it's one or the other.