Don't know where to start

[Andy Green]

Reuven wrote:

>     My system has slowly deteriorated, and I'm not sure when it started,
> but now I can barely boot up.  
> 
> During both shut down and start up the system often freezes after I get
> screens full of what looks like memory addresses.

The place to start is memtest86.  Stick your install CD1 or DVD in and 
boot from it, type

memtest86

at the boot prompt, leave it for a few hours, see what you get.

-Andy