Sounds like it could be some sort of hardware conflict or that your processor is overheating or even being starved of power.
I've also seen this occur with Ram errors and psu faults.
When this problem manifests itself check that nothing within the pc case is getting too hot as the computer can shut down to protect the processor if overheating occurs.
As previously mentioned it could also be a faulty graphics card or even an outdated mother board bios especially if you've upgraded other software/hardware recently.
It could be one or more of a number of things and i'm afraid it's a case of trial and error which could be both costly and time consuming.
Hope this helps.
Simon
March 2006