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Hi all, could anyone help me with my Advent laptop?

Specification
CPU Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz (Northwood)
BIOS AMIBIOS.
Memory 512MB PC2100 DDR SODIMM (2 memory slots. Max 1GB) ***
Hard Drive 40GB Toshiba drive)
CD Drive QSI SDR-081
Screen 15" TFT (Native Res.1024x768)
Video Card ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB DDR **
Sound Card SiS 7012 audio chipset
Modem SmartLink 56K
Netword Card SiS 900 integrated fast ethernet

I don't know if this is definately the spec inside as it was bought off ebay cheap as it has some v minor cosmetic damage (missing hinge, v tiny crack to casing)

Apparently it's a rebadged Gericom Blockbuster 251S6?

It was bought primarily to surf the internet, and play football manager
Anyway, we turned the thing on, all good, then attempted to load some games on, football manager, age of mythology, nothing too bad.
Had some problems with graphics so downloaded Omega drivers?OmegaDrivers.net

Anyway, had problems with it, it kept crashing, random errors, blue screens etc so we did a clean install of winxp sp1, didn't put sp2 on cos had heard of problems with this machine with sp2 ie won't shut down properly etc.

Same problems, as soon as you try to do anymore than surf the web it crashes, freezes etc different messages and screens.

I've tried various diagnostic tests ,(Memtest 86, prime 95), but a) it fails them all! and b) I don't really know what I'm looking for!
(I've bought new ram and tried it in different slots so unless I've been very unlucky I don't actually think it's the ram even though it fails memtest86+, badly)

I have various error files and minidump things if anyone can tell me which ones would be helpful and what to do with them!
I'm particularly interested in Event 7023 which always seems to occur around the time of the crashes.

All help and/or suggstions as to what direction to go in gratefully received!

Thanks

Angela

if it fails memtest either the ram is bad or the motherboard is bad.
if you bought new ram, I doubt the ram is bad unless you bought the wrong kind - you did read the installing ram guide in the guides forum of course.
So since you bought it off of ebay, I would assume the motherboard is bad or ram slots are bad. Used eElectronics are very dicey to buy off of ebay. I have been burned about 50% of the time.

Install the new ram, remove the old. Install your windows XP and download all associated drivers. Start fresh. If you continue to have problems, your laptop is bad.