Experiencing major browser problems

I'm having huge browser problems for the past couple of days. Basically the browser shuts down randomly many times a day. It must have shut down over 25 times yesterday alone. With IE it just closes, no message, nothing, just disappears.

So i started using firefox, well crashes randomly too. at least it gives me the option to restart my tabs but still, I can't work this way.

I've even had my computer restart itself a couple of times. Once i was watching a youtube video and it froze the video and then restarted the whole computer. I also noticed once when IE crashed it actually did give a message saying that flash caused it to crash.

Here is what I have done so far to try and fix the problem
-updated my video card drivers
-uninstalled and resinstalled flash
-downloaded java again
-checked the hd for errors using chkdsk
-checked for rootkits
-and of course scanned for viruses using both comodo anti virus and spy bot.

I am all out of ideas and its still happening

some basic info about the pc
windows xp home service pack 3
intel processor core2quad
IE7
whatever the latest firefox is..

 

Same behavior in safe mode? Did you run the malware detection as outlined in the sticky "Read and Run Me First" in the malware removal forum?

Is the box clean, did you reseat the memory sticks? Almost seems like two different things happening here, browser closing and computer restarting.:wave

 

I haven't ran it in safe mode to see, i didn't do the read and run my first in the malware section but i did run my antivirus and spybot which usually will take care of those problems.

one thing i did notice with the memory sticks is when i install ram def, it doesn't give me any readings. it just says 2047.1 available and 0 used all of the time, even though i have 4 gigs (though i am running xp, so it im not sure if it would really say 4000 or 3650 or something similar).

however, when i remove one stick and run the computer, ram def works. i thought maybe one stick was bad but when used individually ram def works, put both in and ram def doesn't work. does that mean anything?

 

yes, i have read this and will have to try it. thing is you never know when its going to happen. sometimes it goes hours and sometimes its minutes.

 

Did you have your system evaluated for the memory at www.crucial.com?

Try also memtest;
http://majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=350&file=15&evp=f5639906cc2420909e03f3754e187334
:wave

 

i will try memtest..do i need to burn it to a cd to use it? im kinda confused by the iso/boot/floppy..

i will also try removing one stick and see what happens. i find it very odd that i can not get a reading with ram def with both sticks installed, yet individually they will both give readings.

thanks for all of your help!

 

Well the computer came with those sticks installed and ran fine for nearly a year before this started happening. i am running the computer with one stick now and haven't encounted restarts or browser crashes yet.

 

i just wanted to update that since i removed one stick there have been no restarts, no browser crashes. i think i might just buy 2 new sticks and hope for the best. can you test if its a bad slot?