I know it's not my ram, this machine is my work horse and it does duty running several memory intensive programs, I'd see bad memory problems pretty quickly. ( I'll break out my uBuntu disk and run a memory scan in the AM )
As for drivers, yep just did a re-install a week ago and downloaded the latest drivers at that time, not much on here right now, except basic work stuff and a few freeware games, it's all pretty odd really, this machine runs good for what it is, and I haven't experienced a hard-lock like this in at least a year and a half.
As for your question about when, it first happened when I clicked on the icon to go to the Main Menu ( top right from battlescape ) then it started happening during random points, in the base screen, in the battlescape, and on the geoscape, it's a total freeze up, no chance to get to the taskmanager, can't use the keyboard or mouse, thankfully I have the reset button wired up or I'd be sitting there with my finger on the power button for 4 secs each time. (LAME I know) :wink:
I think I had similar problems to this a couple of years ago and it was related to the gfx library (SDL I think), but that was a different GFX card too.
Well I'll let you know the result of my mem scan but I'm v.sure it'll be a negative. Any other ideas? I'm open to any suggestions.