I think my machine is finally dead. I went to use my machine the other day. I have it set to go to stanby and turn the monitor off after 5 minutes of non-use. Sometimes the machine gets stuck and takes a reboot to make it actually come back. This time it didn't. It just refused to boot. Nothing appears after pressing the power button. I have noticed since then, that it will boot every now and again and run for about ten minutes before locking up and refusing again to reboot. Things I have tried: Reseating the RAM (I checked one of the times I got it to boot, it reads all of it) Cleaning the CPU fan and Replacing the rear exaust, (just to see if it was getting to hot. Reseating the power connector. Disconnecting all drives and add on cards. I have not been able to check the CPU itself or try another on the baord. I'm pretty sure it's either the board or the CPU itself, but I want your thoughts.

Inspect the capacitors on the motherboard. Look for bulging or leaking. The capacitors are round cylindrical things. There are multiples of them in two or three sizes. If you find any evidence of this your MB is bad. Even if this isn't present, your MB could still be the culprit. I doesn't sound like your CPU but I guess it could be. Do you monitor temps? I'm curious, how does your memory add up to 144Mb? Memory can cause your symptoms. You must have multiple sticks installed. You could run a memory test from a floppy to see if the memory is producing errors or try running just one stick. Power supply could be on the way out too. If you can get it running monitor the voltages.

I have a 128 and a 16 installed. Not the greatest configuration, but every little bit helps. :) I've had it like this for a long time. And yes, I know what capitors are, and I will inspect them. Thanks for the suggestion. What about the PSU? Could that be the culprit. Mabey a wire not transferring power?

PS could have been marginal all along. Dirt and dust conspire to make it less effiecent, waek cooling fan in the PS. The best thing is to check voltages on the various rails. I'm not an Intel man so I don't know if your rig can monitor temps or not. If you have a SMART capable HD and MB, enable SMART in the BIOS. This may indicate if your HD is going bad.

I can't get to the BIOS. And no, I cannot monitor voltages anyway.

Go for the basics first, try another power supply. HTH

It could be a psu overheating problem. With the pc *DISCONNECTED* from the mains, open the psu and blow out any muck with a hairdryer set to cold and max blast. Use a thin brush to assist. Clean also the psu fan. When pc starts, observe psu fan to see if rotating ok. If not, replace (from a scrapper?). Good luck - Keep us posted.