Well the new computer seemed to solve the problem. i don't know if the other one was just old or what, it did run at one point in time. anyway the new machine is a intel core duo E7550 with a gigabyte mother board, 4 gb of ram and the intel video chipset. i added a 320 gb hard drive and am running win xp. so far zero problems and its been on for two days straight. i periodically go and fiddle with the control to make sure that its still on and do some jogging, run a short program and then let it sit. before it would lock up while changing screeens, activating a program, or just sitting there.
my computer guru surmises that the ram is bad in the old setup. but its not worth trying to locate old ram to keep it going.