Applications randomly exiting/crashing

[GeorgeK]

Hi all, i've be encoutering some random crashes with certain programs on my computer. This all started after i tried playing crysis warhead on steam (which i never got to). After that, I would just be browsing the net via IE or FF and it would crash followed by the "....has encoutered an problem and needs to close." Sometimes this would happen continously after opening IE/FF but then would temporaly go away. This would also happen when i would Open Steam, and it would just magically close itself and i would have to reopen it again and again..I figured i had a virus and formatted but the problem never went away..Computer is a new build and was not experiencing this when i first got it up and running.. Temps for my computer are pretty good too.

Specs:

-Win XP Pro SP2 (had SP3 but thought it was the culprit and rolled back to SP2)

-Intel Q9450 @ Stock w/Thermalright TRUE 120 w/ HR-05 SLI/IFX
-GIGA X48-DQ6
-G.Skill 4GB PC8500 DDR2
-Nvidia GTX 280 @ Stock
-Corsair TX650
-Antec 1200

 

[GeorgeK]

EDIT: I ran prime95 on stock settings and after 2 hours, 2 cores would crash. When overclocking my CPU @ 400MHz FSB (3.6GHz) and raising vCore (1.256v) and mem volts (2.06v), Prime95 kept going at it 12+ hours and i've experienced no application crashes...you think this problem has something to do with my memory or cpu?