white macbook keeps freezing after upgrades...

[kingkongballs]

I bought a macbook from a friend who bought it from a friend, and decided to upgrade it, but after doing so, I have found it locks up quite a bit.

I currently don’t have OSX installed – the laptop didn’t come with a disc, and my backup from a previous laptop wont work on this one, so I currently have Windows Vista home premium SP1 running, although I had tried with both Windows 7 and XP and was still receiving the same problems.

When OSX was installed, the info said it was a macbook 3.1, which I have read supports upto 4GB (6GB unofficially) ram, although having bought 2 x 2GB modules, I noticed it locking up. I removed one, and it was a bit better, but continued to lock up. I then removed both and put back in the original 2x512mb modules and it’s still freezing.

I replaced the 80GB HDD with a 500GB and I’m now wondering if it has something to do with that. I don’t have the original HDD right now to test, but I’m wondering if this may somehow be the problem.
Here’s the HDD I bought:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250496356056&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:GB:1123

the macbook was fine before the upgrades, although that was when running OSX, but now it’s almost useless. Trying to watch a simple video from youtube freezes the entire machine, and when playing music, the audio is choppy.

At one point I thought it may be because I don’t have OSX installed and went straight with windows, but even through bootcamp, a new partition is created and the boot mood for that drive is changed, new drivers are installed and it is separated from OSX (to my knowledge anyway) – so I’m not sure how that could make a difference.

Any info would be greatly appreciated right now.

I contacted the seller of the ram, and he has sent me a returns form, but that was before replacing the original 1GB, and since it’s still messing up, I can only assume the ram was not the culprit.

thanks

[kingkongballs]

After an overwhelming amount of support from my post, I’ve been able to partially narrow my problems down to one common cause.
The internet.

Last night (or 3 nights ago, depending on when you read this), I managed to get through 3 DVD’s without any mishaps (aside from the audio being a bit choppy), but as soon as I went online to watch south park, everything froze up.
After 13 minutes, I regained control of the laptop and was able to watch the episode (which wasn’t very funny for once) until the end, and upon trying to close firefox, the system locked up again.

Today, after downloading and installing SP2 for vista, IE8 was also installed and worked ok for a bit, until it crashed and gave me the blue screen.

I then shot a video, edited 2 minutes worth, exported, played in VLC without a problem. Went online to check a mail, and it crashed.

So my question now is, assuming there is an issue with my wifi card, if apple issued an update through OS X, would that also ‘fix’ the problem while in Windows?

I owned the first macbook, which was overheating and shutting down randomly. Eventually, apple released an update that patched the problem and I never had the same issue since, in either windows or OS X.

Assuming the answer to my question is yes, should I hunt down someone with a compatible OSX disc and install, or will it not make the slightest bit of difference?