Weird Crashes

[mrpanda]

Hi, been having a few problems with my computer lately, thought someone in here my point me in the right direction.

A few applications started crashing lately. At first it was just media applications, but now I've noticed firefox crashing too, even gcc crashed once.
Figured it might be a software problem (running linux, thought maybe the recenet kernel upgrade) but WMP crashes on windows as well.

First thing I checked was my memory. Memtest86 didn't find anything and a different stick didn't help either.

Then I tried disabling the onboard sound in the bios. Didn't do the trick.

Checked my hard drive for bad blocks and such (both my windwos and linux partitions) - all ok.
Also, playing files off of my mp3 player's hard drive resulted in the same problems.

My CPU temperature seems normal - ~55 on idle for Athlon XP 1800.
Just in case I checked it with heavy air conditioning and an open case (CPU was 44, MB 37) and it still happened.

Only thing I haven't checked is my video card. But it seems unlikely that a faulty video card problem will crash console applications.

Any one has any idea what might be the problem? Anything I haven't looked into that can cause this?

Oh, and some applications just don't crash - or haven't yet. No system instabilities or lockups either.

Thanks in advance.

 

[wpshooter]

How about spyware or viruses.

I did not see that on your check list or did I miss it ?

 

[mrpanda]

Well, it would have to be on both linux and windows.
Windows I don't use regulary, so that won't happen there.
And it would be extremely rare on linux.