You may want to try eliminating programs starting up in the background that could be causing problems. Go to START | RUN, and in the Open box type "MSCONFIG" and click OK. Click the Startup tab, and remove the checks to nonessential programs, or programs that you do not use normally. Click OK, and restart when prompted. You can continue removing items (except for ScanRegistry, LoadPowerProfile, and SystemTray) until the problem clears up.

cody,

thanks for the advice. but upon checking, there are more than 30 programs that are in the startup list, all of which were installed that way by dell.

any advice on what might be the most logical offender, based on known issues? i'd rather not turn everything off, and since the problem is intermitant, it's not too easy to do a trial and error fix.

thanks.

Look for aany post by Denny Denham and check his link there. This will get your Resources up and the higher it is the faster and smoother you computer is going to run. Its really not Dell but the software companies that do this. You still can run the programs ,they just will not be running in the background .

my computer is only a month old and im having the same problem, when i go online it crashes half the time and i get a blue screen that waffles about outdated drivers and reporting the crash after you reboot but doesnt say that it is outdated drivers but rather it could be or maybe something else. im a bit lost as to how the software was out of date the day i set my pc up, this must be a joke. i have now reported the problem about 20 times and i dont seem to be getting any help, can some one advise me on the best course of action as im fast becoming fed up and i lost 45 mins of work already today.