> I know that many of you out there know a good deal about computers, so I'm hoping you can help me figure out what's wrong...
>
> Sak"extremely annoyed, to say the least"ura

Fixing computers is actually my profession so I suppose I better throw in my two-pennorth.

Has the disk been defragged and scanned regularly? Good disk house-keeping solves a lot of problems. Get rid of any temp (*.tmp) files that are still there and older than todays date. Are the motherboard and all the bits inside covered in dust? Are you leaving the PC on all the time?

Also check out the silly things. I once found a problem to be that the hard disc had come loose and was resting on the CPU heatsink!! Needless to say it was getting rather hot.

Bea 'tles? Silly name for a pop group! said the old colonel feeling a bit te' sty