NIC crashing system?

hey folks,
Ive got a windows 2000 box and for some reason it blue screens left and right. its been suggested that the file share program I use (edonkey) is working the NIC more than most other applications on my comp, and faulty hardware and/or faulty drivers for it are causing the OS to crash into a bsod. how feasable or possible is this? i dont want to go and buy a new NIC if i dont have to :\

basically if i leave edonkey running for a while it could crash in 10 minutes, 4 hours, or 40 hours. theres not rhyme or reason to it. it just crashes

Athlon 1ghz
XFX KT400-ANB
768mb DDR266
420watt thermaltake PSU
40gb WD 7200 HDD 8mb cache
30gb WD 5400 HDD 2mb cache
Sapphire Radeon 9100
SB Live 5.1 w/live drive
Linksys network everywhere 10/100 NC100

nah I havnt been through all that, but in retrospect i should have. the way it was crashing though (very predictably and very easy to reproduce) let me to belive it was somthing worse than heat. and i know it wasnt the power supply because ive tried several, and the one in there now is a brand spankin new thermaltake 420 watter.

BUT to update, my friend and I (he does this for a living) decided to take his moms athlon 1ghz out of her machine and put it in mine to see if that was the problem, and he put it on without a heatsink (duh?). so that cpu fried. then i tried my cpu in her motherboard, only in a wave of stupidity i didnt plug in the heatsink's fan, so after about 5 minutes of running, we fried that cpu too. arent we clever? so anyways i bought myself an Athlon XP 2000 and away all of my problems went. runs like a champ now