got a call from my mom about 2 weeks ago and she said her pc had this to say when she tried to shut it off..."Hardware Malfunction...Call your Hardware Vendor for Support...NMI:Parity Check/memory Parity error...***The system has halted***

now..I thought it was the memory goin bad so I called a friend and he agreed...so I got a new stick from newegg and installed...ran the pc most of the day and when it shut down..I got the BSOD again...w/ the new stick of RAM.I thought this was weird so I ran the PC the nexy day and all of a sudden I heard a crash in or on or near the PC...i thought somethin fell off the case but nothin there so I looked inside and u won't believe this...the heatsink fell off the processor(P4 1.8 and I immediately shut the PC off)!!!Blew me away.Thought maybe the tabs had broken off the processor bracket but nope...I installed it back and it stayed there no problem.

Here's my question..am I dealing w/ a processor that's overheating(I've put external fans directly pointing on the processor and the heatsink feels fairly cool) or bad memory or a m/b goin bad or a hd goin or what..is there a way to tell for certain what I'm dealing w/...this is strange..any help would be be appreciated.

I hope you cleaned the HS and CPU and applied new thermal material before re-mounting. There may be a temperature readout in BIOS. Most systems have a over-temp shutdown, but it's shouldn't be relied on. Anyway, yes a over-temp CPU would produce the error message you saw. My guess is that the HS clamps were never atttached right, and the only thing holding the HS on was the sticky thermal pad. When it eventually dried out over over-heated, it fell off.

If you don't re-apply new thermal pad or compound, it'll still be over heating.

Too hot in here, hehe.

A good cooling is necessary these days to run a computer without problems.

that was the funny thing...the heatsink and the processor didn't have any paste or glue residue on it.....each had a square 1 inch piece of silverish foil looking tape on it and they were both clean....no scuffing or anything...i use an app called speedfan and the only thing that really kinda heats up is the hd when scanning 4 viruses etc...BTW...2 or 3 times in the last few days the rear case fan kicks in high rpm's and will keep going until i shut off(but no bsod either)....:$