Tools to diagnose hardware issues?

Try a defrag of the Harddrive. You say it happens when you are trying to read/write large images and videos which could easily be due to fragmentation.

This tool has helped a couple of times in diagnostics. We as a rule don't have any systems out of warrantee so we don't do alot of hardware Diag. But this is simple to use.

http://www.ocia.net/reviews/soyotechaid/page1.shtml

If you are running Vista I would consider putting your RAM up to 4GB installed.

I would also run a few malware scans to make sure nothing has snuck in on you.

I recommend Malwarebytes, Spybot S&D and Avast Antivirus from personal experience and they are all free for home/personal use.

Tell us how big the hard drive is and how much free space is left out of that.

To check it, double click My Computer then right click the hard drive and choose properties.

If it is getting full you need to do something to either add more space or free up some.

I would also suggest adding the extra RAM and having a total of 4 GIG as XP just works better when it is maxed out in the RAM Department. Technically a 32 Bit OS can not address more than about 3.25 GIG of RAM but with these Dual Chanel RAM M'Boards it's better to have too much RAM than under the Addressable Limit of the OS and as you already have the extra RAM why not use it?

As for the Benchmark I would suggest that it is an error that is either just not accurate or it exceeds the ability of the Testing Utility to measure so it defaults to 0 as a output. This can be quite common with non Intel Chip Sets where the Chip Set uses different Instruction Sets to work.

As for a Faulty CPU while it is possible I have yet to see a Failed Intel CPU where there was no other injury done to the computer. Intel CPU's are Ultra Reliable and when the do go off they die completely and never by themselves there is always some other reason for them to go to [b]Silicon Heaven.[/b]

As for the Performance issues look at the BIOS settings for Temp Control and check that this is not set too low so it is Throttling Back the CPU when it is below Normal Operating Temps. Also check for any overheating of the CPU and rectify as necessary this normally involves cleaning out and checking the function of Fans. You can download ASUS Probe from here to check the Temps, listed under Utilities.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Also look at the current usage of the HDD if it is full or badly fragmented this will slow things down considerably and the Windows Defrag Utility isn't that great Things like Auslogics Defrag

http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3000-2086_4-10628872.html

And Smart Defrag

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html?Str=download

Are better options but like the Windows Option they need to be run several times and often not just the once.

If the HDD is getting full you need to think about either adding more space or making space on it to improve performance. Also if you add another HDD move the Page File to it so that the main HDD is not being access for everything.

As for Image Editing you need to look at what you are using and the File Sizes with the more modern apps and large File Sizes these can be slower than older smaller Images and Apps used to perform.

Even something as simple as a New Digital Camera can give the impression of a slow down but if you look at the actual resolution and File Sizes you'll see that the new images are considerably larger so take longer to edit.

The same applies to new games which have got bigger and more resource intensive to play.

Col