Interesting experiment and I think we'd all be wanting to hear how it
goes, though if 10.04 did work better it would be a moot point whether
it was removing WinXP that did it or not.

Pleased ?? No - but intrigued and must admit to a desire to get my
hands on that hardware myself and see what's going on with it

BTW - are you going to use 32bit or 64bit ? Since you are going to
wipe totally perhaps trying both and comparing stability would be a
useful exercise too ?

its that older computer before 64bit came along so it up to the
goods if that is how you see it.

I will let you know.

Is this planned install on a computer that is different that the one you
already have Ubuntu installed on? I only ask because I don't think anyone
would suggest that going from a dual boot to a full install would change
anything. I, at least, certainly would not expect it too. If you are
interested in trying to fix the crashing issues with linux, your best option
would probably be to burn a new iso, check the hash (md5sum or whatever is
recomended these days to check integrity) and try the install on a different
PC. This is just my opinion, and I am no computer expert. But I have a
dell that crashed frequently with Ubuntu. Didn't matter what version, I
think it was a problem with the GPU. Running a headless server on there for
a long time now and no issues.

I appreciate you advice here but no this is not my main computer and
only used to teach. Its probably because Its not a big HD, only 80gb and
now the Ubu takes up the whole drive instead of a partition I hope it
does not crash in the middle of typing a message as it did before the
change made this AM.
This copy was not a burn but a CD from Ubuntu.

I run 32 bit Kubuntu 11.04 on an AMD 64 bit CPU with a 40 GB drive with no
problems. Full install with many additional apps and still lots of space
left over.

With the eception that if there is some sort of incompatibility between the
Linux and the hardware that doesn't show up in XP. You may still have the
same condition and continue to see the crash.