Cause of XP freeze

Put a system together today;
AOpen EZ18 SFF (nForce2)
AMD Sempron 2200+
Mushkin 512MB
Western Digital Caviar 80GB
Sapphire Radeon 9200SE

Anyway I originally had a Samsung Notebook drive in there but it wasn't very friendly with the XP install CD (SP2 BTW). So I used the WD and the install went smoothly.

Windows worked normally as usual. However, it would freeze completely after a couple of minutes. At first I thought it was something in the setting/BIOS so I checked those out. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I did notice that my CPU temps lingered around the high 40s°C in the BIOS. Updated the BIOS, drivers but I still get a complete freeze after short Windows session. I also did a disk diagnostics that showed that I had a healthy drive.

Then I decided to transfer the components back to my desktop;
Biostar M7NCG
AMD Sempron 2200+
Mushkin 512MB
Western Digital Caviar 80GB
Sapphire Radeon 9200SE

Pretty much the same, board runs on nForce too. But so far, the system has been running smoothly. After installing some applications the system ran fine. I've been monitoring SMART on the HDD and nothing out of the ordinary so it looks like I'm all set.

Considering the higher temps I get from the SFF, I'm deducing that it's an overheating problem; the components reach a specific temperature and the whole system freezes on the spot. Well, what do you guys think?

I wonder if newegg will let me return the barebone...

Did you install all the drivers for your hardware? Mobo, vid etc.

Yup, I installed the drivers that came on the CD; first the mobo, followed by the vga. The device Manager . When I plugged the stuff onto the Biostar mobo, Windows was able to detect and install the drivers itself (which I assume originated from the AOpen's nForce2 board).

Working smoothly. Although Active Smart reported a Spin-Up Time drop from 107 to 106. Also if the computer is turned on with the ipod connected, it will freeze at the very beginning of the bootup screen (before even stating the processor specs). Otherwise the ipod mini works normally under Windows. Scary stuff...

What Service Pack are you running, and is the IPOD on a firewire connection?

There have been several problems relating to Firewire and stability/performance issues in SP1. If you haven't already, upgrade to Service Pack 2 and maybe that will help your system to work properly.

EDIT: 7 stars! Yay!

SP2 and it's connected via USB.

I heard of this issue but the iPod freezes while in windows. In my case, if the iPod is connected via the USB and I hit the power switch, the system freezes right at the starting.