Computer freezing with no BSOD, Multiple OS Reformats

I'm running a machine that I bought used not too long ago. It's an msi m/b with an athlon 3200 and 2gb ram, ati radeon 9000, wdd 40gb sata, and whatever else. From when I first installed xp on it (it came with the hdd blank, till now (i've installed xp on it twice from scratch) it's froze for reasons unknown to me. My first guess was the power supply, swapped that and still happens just the same. Now I don't really have any other compatible parts to swap into this machine unfortunately atm so I'm not sure how else to diagnose this problem, particular without any error event logs and no blue screens. Anyone have any idea how to diagnose this issue?

p.s. I have noticed that this occurs typically during watching some sort of video and occurs quite often (usually a minute or two in) to watching video though it sometimes occurs without video playing.

 

sounds like it might be a driver / codec problem
when you say the hdd was blank was their a previous OS on their that had been formatted and are you using any codec packs and what player are you using?
Also when you formatted was it long one? (should always do a long one on a used drive)

and just out of curiosity how much did this system cost?

 

I'd be checking heat signatures ....... does the Radeon have a fan attached?

 

I was checking heat levels with cpu cool but I was not checking the video card. I had suspected overheating at the video card but unless something is working improperly I doubt that's the case. The computer case has an intake and outlet fan that is located right next to the radeon. There is also very little dust build up on the components. Unfortunately this is all sort of irrelevant right now as amid my hastiness of troubleshooting the problem at 2 a.m. the other night I pulled a memory stick out of the board while power was on and seem to have fried the board. So hopefully I can just swap the board and that clears things up as I've ruled out most everything at this point minus the cpu (unlikely) the video card (maybe) and the m/b (hopefully).

 

Well I'd be thinking its more likely the Video Card, but for your sake its the Motherboard, i guess it could be, I mean, they're notorious for being the cause of just about every other issue .........