Six years is doing good. However give us a make and model number, that always helps things along.

Have you ever removed the side panel and blown out the dust bunnies. This is the first place to start. If the computer rests on the floor move it up, even a 6 inch block will work wonders as all dust eventually reaches floor level and you disturb it as you walk about. The fans then suck it in.

If it is dusty in there buy a bottle of compressed air, remove the computer outdoors (you don't want to upset whoever cleans the house) and blow the dust out. BE SURE to hold a finger on the fan so it does not spin wildly and pay particular attention to the fan on the motherboard. This protects your processor and very likely it is overheating and shutting down to prevent damage.

If you live in a VERY dusty environment and it is bad in there then also take a look between the plastic front panel and the metal behind. There is a 3/4 inch space that can get bad.

You can also test for heat issues by removing the left side and use a small house fan to blow in on the components. This is not a fix but a temporary measure so you can decide if heat is the issue here.

Let us know how that works for you

I don't like these symptoms at all so if this system does get running backup everything on it that is important to you. I don't like the "upgrade BIOS and the BSODs.

O is correct as anything is possible from the simplest to the most complex.

Is this a laptop? If so, did you spill something on it?

Would you know if you have an Asus motherboard?

Can you boot up in Safe Mode?

Other than the previously mentioned, any removal or installation of applications? Any current applications reconfigured or upgraded?

Please do not put any money into your system by taking it to a "tech". You didn't report what version of XP you have, but regardless the life cycle of XP in totality is waning with the announced full release of Win8 for later this year. You will then be three O/S behind, and as software becomes more weighted and complex for W8 the first thing to be jettisoned is the code for unsupported O/Ss.

If the decision does come where you now do purchase a new system with W7, be sure to review the requirements for the free Microsoft upgrade to W8.

DA

IE9 is NOT for xp so stick with IE8.

if you can run a belarc scan for us and tell us info from the pc including the make and model, especially how much RAM memory it has and how much free space is available on the hard drive.
Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit (Version 8.2g)

If you can also please grab this handy tool and run it, it will let us know a lot more about the blue screens you are seeing and might give us a clue as to what is happening during them, this is a wonderful tool for that type of problem.
BlueScreenView
click the green download now button that will pop up a new box with the exe file just save it to your desktop or somewhere on your pc that you can find it again then double click on it there to run the program. Post the info.

Also for Blue screens

Download WhoCrashed See link below for whocrashed.
This program checks for any drivers which may have been causing your computer to crash....

Click on the file you just downloaded and run it.

1 Put a tick in Accept then click on Next.

2 Put a tick in the Don't create a start menu folder then click Next

3 Put a tick in Create a Desktop Icon. then click on Install and make sure there is a tick in Launch Whocrashed before clicking Finish.
Click Analyze
It will want to download the Debugger and install it Say Yes

WhoCrashed will create report but you have to scroll down to see it.
Copy and paste it into your next reply.

Here is a link that might be useful: Who crashed download

Thanks everyone...
I have a dell desktop
Windows XP version 2002
Intel Celeron
cpu 2.53GHz
512 MB of Ram

I have removed the cover before, a couple of times, and blew it out, but I bet it is dirty again. I will try some of the other things too and report back tomorrow evening. Thanks so much for your advice. Have a great night!

I ran the belarc Advisor, lots of info there, what all should I post from it?

I did grab this and can post what ever you need:

75.62 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
46.13 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

Okay I think we have a good idea of a lot of your problems. The pc is very outdated and severely lacking in RAM. I am surprised that you can do much of anything with it.
The celeron processor is a very low end light weight processor to begin with. The added fact that you only have 512 MB of RAM is the second killer.
I would not put any money into this pc. It might be ok to run a Linux distro if there are not failing components but it sounds like that might be happening too.
If you are able to try what zep and I suggested we can get a better idea of what might be failing.

Hello, I thought I would give you an update. The next day after I wrote the above request for help I came home from work to find I had no internet, uverse tv, no service. I was bummed because I wanted to work on my issues and follow your directions to trouble shoot. They over nighted me a new gateway modem, which didnt solve the problem, still no service. 3 days later a tech comes and finds a bad wire from the pole to my house.

I have not had a problem since. No computer crashes, my anti virus is able to do a full scan. A couple of internet explorer issues, but no where near the problems I was having! The whole time I was having problem it was due to a bad wire? I know I have an old computer, but I think I just squeezed a little more time out of it!

Thank you all for your help and advice you gave. I did bookmark you urls for future reference.

Good for you, and thanks for the report. So many members forget to share with us how things come out.

DA

yes definitely good for you and thank you for letting us know.

I do think it would be a very very good idea to be backing up anything important you would not want to lose however because not if but when ....
you are on borrowed time especially with only that much memory.

Large capacity thumb drives are going for cheap these days I have been buying them when I see such dirt cheap prices they come in handy for this kind of storage backup.