Windows Explorer all squirrelly

Hello,
I just discovered this site and I hope someone here can help me. I did a search and saw that a lot of people have had trouble with Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer...) freezing up or having an error and needing to quit, but most of them seemed to be related to media files (images or mp3s). My problem is a little different :

when I am trying to open/rename/move files in the explorer window, it will often freeze (but not every single time, and not only on specific file types). I get no error message, but the file I am trying to click (or double click, or right click...) on does not respond. So I try to close the Explorer window, and it gives me the 'this program is not responding' error message. When I tell it to quit, the window closes and all the icons on my desktop as well as the taskbar disappear for a second or two ; when they come back, the minimized windows in the taskbar are not in the same order, half the system tray icons are missing, and I can no longer minimize a window by clicking its icon in the task bar (I have to use the special 'minimize' button in the top right corner).

I *just* (2 weeks ago) did a complete deep reformat and clean reinstall of windows to fix this very problem, so I am getting cranky, and I am about to start grad school (graphic design, will need my computer all the time) so desperately need a computer that I can rely on and will not have time to be playing around with it and reformatting every 2 days...

I tried searching on google (that's how i found you) and also on the Microsoft Knowledge Database and many other sites, but so far I have not found any answers or cases that seem exactly like my problem.

My system info :
-Windows 2000 Pro (with all updates/security patches/service packs, I got all the latest ones directly from the MS site right after the reinstall);
-Pentium4 /Athlon (not sure about the speed, in the system info program that goes with my motherboard it says max speed 3733MHz, current speed 2400MHz)
-512 DDRAM (now is probably a good time to get a second barrette, last year when i had to replace my system RAM was too expensive)
-McAfee Anti-virus and Kerio personal firewall, adsl internet connection;
-2 HD : 40giga (partitioned into 10 and 30, the 10giga is my C: with windows and most programs on it), plus a second one, 15giga, not partitioned, used primarily for storing data.

the proc, motherboard and DDRAM are all newish (1 year old), the HD are about 2 years old (40giga) and 4 years old (15giga).

If I forgot something important, just tell me...

for the moment very few programs installed because I don't want to reinstall *everything* 6 gajillion times, in case I need to reformat again...

Please help, I am getting really frustrated and if I don't get this fixed in the next few days it will be a huge problem for my classes !!! Could it be the RAM ?? I saw that with Windows98 defective RAM could cause similar problems, but I am using Win2000 (and DDRAM, supposed to be much more reliable than SDRAM to justify the higher price...) ??? Could it be a software conflict (but which one??) ??? could it be a driver ???? It can't be a virus, I have none, and if I had any spy/adware before (don't think so) the reinstall would have killed them, but I still have the same problem !!! Seriously, my head is going to explode soon... Thanks for taking the time to help me...

 

oh yeah ! and i forgot : also am getting the blue screen of death too often for my liking, but not in any specific context (very random), last time i got this message :

"Driver IRQL not less or equal
Address BFEAB953 base at BFE93000
Date stamp 3eaf051d-NDIS.sys
Début du vidage de la mémoire physique"

literal translation of that last bit : "Beginning to empty the physical memory" (eh???), and then *usually* it will start counting down and at zero it reboots.

Sometimes the message is different, and the weird address starts with IDE (i think... i was copying them down for a while but i lost the paper).

Related to the explorer problem ? Can I fix this problem ?