Strange crash leading to Blue Screen Of Death

Hi everyone, I really hope that someone can help me with this problem as it is starting to irritate me now.

At the moment whenever I start my PC I can get at most 5 minutes from it before it crashes, this happens no matter what I am doing. When it has crashed it normally doesn't show a Blue Screen Of Death, however when it does all that comes up is the letter "A ".
I then have to manually reset the computer by holding the power button in. After I've reset it the PC doesn't start my PS/2 keyboard or USB mouse and my monitor just defaults to No Signal. I normally have to wait at least 20 - 30 minutes before I can restart the PC and it actually start up the peripherals.

I am running XP SP2, it's a relatively new install (less than 3 months old), my PC isn't overclocked at all, I've not recently installed any new hardware and am running all the latest drivers. My Specs are:

Tagan 500w PSU,
MSI Neo2 915G Platinum MoBo,
2Gb Corsair DDR2 RAM (2x 1Gb Stick),
Seagate Barracuda 120Gb HDD,
Sapphire ATI X800XT Graphics Card,
Pioneer DVD-RW,
Samsung CD-RW,

If anyone can help me sort this out, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi, Snakebite. Welcome to Windows BBS!

Although your symptoms are not identical to the symptoms in this linked thread, there are some suggestions in that thread that I think would apply to you regarding the following areas to investigate.

• Temperature, voltage, and fan speed readings in the BIOS
  Since you have to wait 20-30 minutes to successfully boot after a crash and your crashes occur 5 minutes or so after booting, the CPU might be overheating. Your CPU fan might be malfunctioning too.
• PSU
• Testing your RAM for faults
• Checking the RAM voltage, frequency, and timings in the BIOS
• Checking for RAM compatibility with the motherboard
• Checking for bad capacitors on the motherboard
• Disconnecting nonessential hardware (such as CD drives, etc.)

Please let us know details about the areas suggested above and we'll see if we can proceed from there.

 

The RAM is compatible with the MoBo, I've been using the same RAM/MoBo combination for the last couple of years with no problems. I'll try the other things and get back to you.