PC crashing. :(

[skinny killer]

my PC's been acting up. the other night. the fan started spinning super fast and the whole PC shut down.

I couldn't get it to turn back on and it was showing a orange light over the power switch when it usually has a green light.

I thought maybe it was over heated so I unpluged it to feet of the heat sync but it was cool.

I pulled out one of my 4 sticks of ram and it came on. I then shut it off, unplugged it and replaced the ram and it's been running fine.

this has happend twice, only this is the first time my fan has gone heywire. I mean it was really going, you could hear it thru the whole house!!!!!!! LOL

I'm running a XPS 400 model.

it crashed again just a few minutes ago. I had a game of Bf2 running and the screen goes black even tho the PC is running and the pc does not respond. I shut it down and it won't come on untill I remove a ram stick or two. then I can turn it on. after it is booted up I can shut it down and replace the ram and it works fine.


a friend of mine told me it's becuase two of my ram sticks are 1GB DDr2 and the other two are of a lower speed, could this be true?

I'd be greatful for any ideas. I have 140 GB of Models, skins, maps, mods for like 9 different games that I don't wanna lose.