Fed Up w/ new computer freezing...HELP

This is my first time actually posting on the site, I am posting in hopes that someone out there can give me some help or guidance as to why my computer is locking up.

Here is the scenario ::

I log into windows, I can do simple things like surf the web, and run word and use AIM, but when I try to play some games, I can't it freezes on the loading screen for the game (this happens in Rome: Total War and Age of Mythology: Titans) it has also froze while I was trying to install Nero 6, I rebooted and it froze again. I am desperately trying to figure out the cause of the freezing, I have the newest mobo drivers, video drivers, sound drivers, i flashed the newest bios onto the mobo, I run XP SP2...computer specs are as follows

Abit Fatal1ty Motherboard AA8XE
P4 640 3.2 GHz 64-bit
1 GB PQI DDR2 4200
Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 Pro VIVO
Onboard Sound (Realtek)
Linksys LNE100TX LAN Card (from old computer)
Western Digital 60 Gig Hard Drive 7200 RPMs (from old computer)
Sony CD-RW Drive (from old computer)
AOpen 52x CD Drive (from old computer)
Floppy
Thermaltake Xaser 480W Power Supply

**on the AOpen drive im using a serial ATA converter to IDE because it is IDE and this mobo only comes with one IDE cable

It seems like it is only freezing when the computer is under stress situations like loading a large application and installing a file (usually freezes middle to end of file install), I let the computer idle for a day, and it didn't freeze, so I know I can let it sit there, BUT I WANT MORE FOR MY MONEY. I was thinking it is a voltage problem, but I don't really know what I should change my voltages to if that is even the cause of the problem. If anyone can give me any kind of help with this problem I would be extremely thankful.

 

First I would get rid of that coverter and take a an IDE cable from your old comp.

 

It only has one IDE spot on the motherboard, the rest are SATA

 

Did you format the drive,or just plug it straight into your new system from your old one?could you give a description of the steps you have took when building your new pc.

 

Formatted the drive on old computer, moved it to the new one, formatted again through the XP install CD, installed SP2

Building the computer, I put it all together, then I installed windows (Above), then installed newest Abit drivers, newest ATI drivers, sound card drivers, LAN drivers...still froze...flashed the new BIOS onto the board, reformatted again, reinstalled XP, reinstalled all the new drivers, changed the video drivers to NGO ATI Optimized Driver v2.3, now I can play Age of Mythology all the time, and Rome: Total War some times (ive gotten it to load 3 times over the past 2 days, I have tried alot of times to get this), when I could not before with the newest ATI Catalyst drivers. If there is anything else you would like to know about the install, let me know, this problem is aggrevating me to death.

 

From here I would just have the basic sytem installed,mobo,cpu,1 dimm of mem,gfx card,PSU and HD,also disable onboard sound.If you have nothing to lose do a fresh Win install,but first run the basic system,download a monitor Utility I like speedfan but sandra is in the downloads section here check your temps when running a benchmark like 3dmark2003,all that said I'm leaning towards a damaged HD cable,if you have another one to try great,if you have another HD even better,hope that keeps you busy for a while.good luck.

 

Thanks for the help, im going to try that and get back to you, I hope my hard drive isnt bad and it is just possibly the cable like you think, ill look into both options with the bare hardware installed