Boot Problems

try running memtest? Alot of times boot errors are memory related.

yeah, typically people let it run overnight so it can make a few passes.

Could indicate a file system problem. Hard drive is probably producing bad sectors and could be going. This would be the case especially if it keeps doing it when you reboot. It can't read the data. I would think memory problems would be random and disappear when you reboot.

One other thing that may show if it is the memory is a reinstall. XP uses the memory a lot when it is installing, and if something is wrong with it it may show up then, usually witha bluescreen or an error reading a file/dll.

Though memtest should be able to find out as well.

I do also agree with the thought that it may be the hard drive. If you can find out who the manufacturer is of the drive then see if you can find their software for hard drive testing. Though as a start run defrag.

Also see if you can run the system file checker (sfc /scannow). Might find something.

You may have a bad power supply or bad connection on the 12 volt side. I have run into this a few times where the power supply will conk out and your drive will momentarily flicker on/off for a split second. This can cause the heads to crash. Time for a new PSU or new system.

The power problem could also reside in the wiring in your house. For example, the wiring in my dorm is awful. Everytime the refridgerator kicks ok, it spikes the power and my desktop would freze. Something similar could be happening on your end. I bought a UPS and the problem was solved.

I highly doubt it's heat.

Here are some things to consider. Apologies in advance if you've already worked through them all:

- You could be looking at some sort of spyware/malware/virus mucking with the files on disk. There are a number of free or inexpensive anti-spyware and anti-virus tools out there; it might be worth running a scan.

- This could be a disk going bad. You could try running tools to scan the disk, though, since you say you've had problems with hard disks in the past, that seems less likely.

- It could be a bad I/O controller or chipset. Things like this can be very hard to isolate and track down. Things to look at include the temperature at/around the northbridge. You can also try running benchmarking and stress tools like Prime95 (http://www.mersenne.org/); when I was having stability problems on my last machine, Prime95 would die pretty consistently very early on. It was a good parakeet. You can also try games like putting a hard drive on a different computer to see whether it acts up there, but of course, if it's your boot/OS drive, that's obviously easier said than done!

- It could be, as others have mentioned, a bad power supply. This, too, can be tough to isolate. I'm not sure who makes the motherboard in your Presario, but if they make some sort of motherboard monitoring software, you might try that. Personally, I absolutely love Intel's motherboard monitoring utilities; they show me power levels on each rail (5V, 12V, etc.), temperature at several zones around the motherboard, etc.

- I would generally consider bad memory, but others have already covered that ground.

how many bad clusters did chkdsk report?

Prime 95 will not check you hard drive cable or motherboard IDE controller. It will stress your CPU and memory though. You said it's an old motherboard, what model (socket) is it?

It's not worth troubleshooting. I see tons of these boards sold on eBay all the time for around $10. Best to get a new motherboard, CPU and RAM. Total cost...around $250 for a Pentium 4.