winXP "semi" crashes

[Davegod]

Occasionally, XP will be a little sluggish or do something that feels weird for a moment, and occasionally XP message pops up saying Windows Explorer has crashed, and then the desktop will dissapear (taskbar, icons etc) for a moment leaving only the desktop background, and then everything will come back a second or two later - but the SiliconImage SATALink icon from the taskbar will be missing, and occasionally the dialup networking icon or something else will be missing too (although the dialup is still connected and working). Far as I can tell, after XP does this everything seems basically fine.

Actually it's just happened while writing this post, with the Explorer crash popup. I clicked in taskbar to minimise Firefox and it just happened. I notice now if i click in the taskbar Firefox doesnt minimise but just loses focus.

Any ideas? I dont use either SATA or Raid so I guess I could disable it in the bios and uninstall SATALink which I assume is causing the problems, but would rather find a "proper" fix (i.e. incase I get SATA drive later or whatever). The only other thing I can think it could be is Firefox, sorry hard to tell as it only happens occasionally and catches me unawares.

WinXP Pro SP1 etc
NF7-S (nforce2)

 

[AtTheGates]

I think it is always a good idea to disable the things you are not going to use as it saves resources and IRQs. If your not going to use SATA then there is no reason not to disable it. While your there, disable any game ports, parallels, firewires, etc that you don't use.
If this doesn't fix the problem then try using IE for a week. If you can't pin it on Firefox then find the next most likely candidate. Good luck.