Hey, thanks for your speedy reply...
I had considered the heat and/or power issue, but discarded it since the laptop runs for 2 hours straight with diagnostic software running in it's own DOS environment.. I figured that during the CPU and Mem tests the heat and power are pushed well past the points where they were freezing during normal OS conditions.
I have both downloaded, and OEM DVDs, and even tried installing 7 Home Premium from a flash-drive.
The drivers were initially updated with Driver Genius and then Windows Updates... But last time I went to the Gateway Driver/Support site and downloaded the drivers from there, then did windows update.. and since the error codes were mostly "netbt 4321" I disabled netbios in the adavnced settings under WINS.
Also, It seems that it freezes less the warmer it gets...
Example: freezes during installation.
then freezes after re-installation during driver installation.
then makes it past OS install and driver installation, but freezes during updates.
then after re install, driver installation, and updates, laptop runs for 10 minutes and freezes.
????
Only the Gateway is doing this by the way