Quote Originally Posted by Nuck View Post
CPU, HD, and Mobo temperatures are at normal levels...fans work fine...PSU voltage levels are stable.

It's unlikely that a power surge is the cause of the problem, since they hardly ever occur where I live, and even if they do, my PC is connected to a surge protector.

Occasionaly slowness seems to occur with the entire system - the symptoms are easy to spot: the mouse cursor does not move smoothly, and sound is often quite choppy. Also, some programs take an especially long time to load.

Could it be possible that the problem is program driver-related? I do recall my Sygate Firewall crashing on startup (after the desktop loaded), although this occurred on the second reboot after the program started.
Yeah, according to your statement and info, this could be very well related to damaged system files (mainly registry) and device drivers.....one other valid possibility is faulty RAM.
In 40+ minutes the RAM (if the case is not cooled properly) could easily get hot enough to cause odd issues such as what you are having...