Windows Me; PCChips m810 mob.192meg of memory; AMD thunderbird 850mhz processor; 1.6 gig hard drive and 40gig hard drive. Starting from a power-off status, after memory check word 'wait' appears on screen - this is where everything stops. push reset button and everything appears to work. I want to give this pc to my son but not like this. Any Ideas what is going on?

I would try eliminating the Startup Applications first (except StateMgr) at Start / Run / type msconfig {enter} select Startup tab, then uncheck everything except StateMgr and reboot. If it still appears I would download "BootLog Analyzer" at: http://members.aol.com/axcel216/newtip14.htm#SUYG and see if that doesn't show where the problem is occuring.

this is a hardware problem. it's stopping before the os starts to load. i used to have a machine that did this occasionally and found replacing the power supply fixed it. thats not to say that this is your problem. it could be any number of things. i've also had machines that do what you describe and nothing short of replacing the motherboard would fix it.