Hardware problem...maybe?

Well my computer decided to give me trouble again so i'll make a basic description of the problem and if anyone can help I would really appreciate it.

Everything ran fine untill I installed a game called "Gunbound". After installing it and running the program my computer froze and began messing up. When I tried to restart windows it would come to the log in screen but no further. I would end up with a blank screen and no desktop. At that point I used Ctrl+Alt+Del and selected shutdown. That didn't work either "explorer.exe" was not responding it said. Well it did that everytime I tried to start up so I reinstalled windows. Throughout the reinstallation it froze up everytime I attempted to restart. I hadn't reformated my hard drive yet so I did that. So yesterday I reformated and installed windows again this time it worked. Everything was fine, I had all my drivers installed and even "Battlefield2" was running. Then last night I tried installing my printer and it went to hell again. I plugged in my printer, which happens to be usb, and it auto detected it as it should have. In the lower right hand corner of my screen came what the new hardware was but it was detecting a lot more than it was. Such things as "Printer" "Mass storage device" and just "Print" came up. I ignored that and popped in the software for the printer which froze during installation. The computer/windows didn't freeze just the installation program. Ignoring that too I tried to hop on the internet. That's when it fell apart again. It wouldn't load pages so I tried closing off the browser which then wouldn't close. Not responding came up, I pressed end now and it still wouldn't disappear. I tried to restart at that point and no luck "explorer.exe" was not responding again. I manually shut it down and restart and again it froze prior to the desktop. As of now I have reformated again and reinstalled windows. My audio and video drivers are installed and nothing else. I came straight here after that. If anyone can think of what may be causing all this please let me know.


Also I installed a new video card about three months prior to this whole ordeal. I'm not sure if it's too powerful or what not but I can give a basic list of my hardware if necessary. Just let me know if that's necessary and i'll post it. Thanks again!

 

Operating System? Hardware specs?

Does it need USB drivers to be installed?

 

have it ever said system halted hardware malfunction before? or it completely freeze and mouse not moving?

 

Hardware is as follows:

Motherboard - Elitegroups P4VXASD2+
Ram - 1Gig (2x 512) PC3200 MD4412VOE
HD - Western Digital WD800BB (80 gig)
Processor - Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz
Video Card - ATI Radeon x700 Pro
Power Supply - 450 watt
Operating System - Windows XP Home Edition

As far as errors it has never once given me an error. All programs have frozen but i've never lost use of my mouse either.