Avent 7017 major problems

[I hate this laptop]

Hi all, could anyone help me with my Advent laptop?
It was bought off ebay cheap as it has some v minor cosmetic damage (missing hinge, v tiny crack to casing)
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 have various error files and minidump things if anyone can tell me which ones would be helpful and what to do with them!

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

Thanks

Angela

[chrisling]

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.

You are desperately need to update to SP2. You are extremely vulnerable to malware without the security updates. That is why you had encountered so many crashes and problems.

About the shut down issue, actually there are many troubleshoots on that in www.microsoft.com. For example, this is one I had tried to fix before: "It is Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer" error message when you try to shut down your computer I'm not sure which shut down problem you were facing but I'm sure you can find the solution throught the troubleshoots they had found out, or simpler way: e-mail them.

Minidump file is a log of your system error. It tends to send the report and help you to solve by send back solutions from Microsoft company once you have internet connection.

Please update your Windows, I can't stress how important it is...