[djmcmath]

Oh, golly, Sammy, I'd reckon $70 for a BIOS upgrade probably isn't what you're looking for. It ought to be free (the high quality types usually are; I've had to suffer through old BIOSes because I couldn't justify $70 for a POS upgrade too), I agree.

It is possible that something remained on the hard drive, despite a format and repartition. Depending on what tools you used to do the job, sometimes some things remain. I've honestly never had a windows install come unstable straight out of the box. Ok, I mean, never more unstable than usual.

Hmm ... next guess -- any chance it's one of the devices? Do you have anything unnecessary in the machine? Can you pull the sound card, network card, DVD-burner, etc. for the OS install, then install the hardware later? Sometimes I've had hardware cause funny problems on the install. I'm reaching, though.

Dan