Is mom's motherboad headed south?

[soybean]

Hey guys, thought I'd throw this one at ya.  My mother has a eMachine desktop PC.  I believe it's a 1.3GHz CPU and it's a celeron.  OS is Win XP Home, 256MB of RAM.  On 8/16/09, I picked up her computer and brought it to my place.  She said it would not startup right.  I confirmed that at her place before deciding to take it home with me to do some troubleshooting.

What it was doing is booting to the Windows logon screen and then it would just stop responding.  This started to happen after she had been away from home for about a week. 

After taking it to my place, I replaced the PSU with a used Antec PSU I had obtained from a local computer user's group I belong to.  The PSU was tested and confirmed to be good.  After installing the Antec PSU, the computer was starting normal; I could proceed to her login and operate as usual. 

While it was here, I also removed ATT Self-Help Support Tool, an annoying program her ISP had advised her to install.  I could tell there was something wrong the installation of it.  Her system tray has two identical icons for this software; there should have been only been one.  I used Add or Remove Programs panel to remove it.  After doing so, one icon still appeared in the system tray.  I finally resorted to a registry cleaner which completely removed it; the stray icon was gone.  The registry cleaner was Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, one I've used in my main desktop system and I trust it.  I restarted a few times, logged into her user account, opened Word, etc. to verify everything seemed normal.

I took the computer back to her house and it behaved the same as it has before I took it to my place; it would boot to the Windows login screen and then stall.  After some discussion, mom suggested she and I take it to my place again.  So, we got in her car and brought back to my place.  I connected a monitor, mouse, and keyboard to it.  Wouldn't ya know, it started up normal.  We took it back to her place and the same problem occurred again. 

So, at this point, the situation was quite puzzling.  I tried connecting her computer directly to an outlet. That made no difference.  I thought about suggesting she ask her landlord to have the electrical power checked for any irregularities but that seems unlikely since no other signs of electrical problems are evident in the house.  She has also bought a new surge protector but that made no difference.

The only thing I can think of now is that her motherboard is failing and all this inconsistency between the behavior of her computer between my place and hers is coincidence.  Of course, this seems unlikely based on probabilities but, at this point, I'm grasping at straws here.

I have a idle computer here that has Windows ME on it.  I could take it to her place and see whether it runs normal just to verify there's nothing weird about her electrical power that's causing a problem.  Beyond that, I'm tempted to advise her to buy a new computer.

Any thoughts?

[patio]

I think your suspicions are well founded in regards to the MBoard...eMachines for years used the cheapest components they could find...

That board also may not be too expensive to replace...new....there's still some out there...

However before spending the cabbage i'd swap in another PSU and see...even though the Antec tested good. You never know.

You may also want to take the time to run MemTest on it...how's the housekeeping end of things ? ?
I'm assuming this was checked already.

[soybean]

thanks for the reply, patio.  I can swap another PSU into it and see what happens. 

The housekeeping end of things is pretty good; I try to take a peek at that from time to time. She's using Windows firewall, Avast anti-virus, Spybot S & D and has CCleaner installed.  I have to occassionally remind her keep current on some of the housekeeping but I don't think there are any significant problems in that area. 

As far as replacing the motherboard, I think I'd rather prod her to buy a new one, considering of the low-end prices in the market now.  I wouldn't do that if I thought she couldn't afford it, but that's not the case.  The computer is not very upgradeable.  It has onboard video and has no AGP slot.  The RAM (256MB) is a bit lower than optimum.  So, rather than spend any money on it, I think I'd rather see her replace it if testing with a different PSU does not do the trick.  The local computer uesrs' group has a recycling drive in late September.  If this one can be refurbished, they could do that.  This is something they do and then make such computers available to needy families. 

I'll post back with the outcome of this.

[Fed]

So, we got in her car and brought back to my place.  I connected a monitor, mouse, and keyboard to it.  Wouldn't ya know, it started up normal.  We took it back to her place and the same problem occurred again. 

I'd try it with your monitor, mouse and keyboard at your Mom's place.
I'd also try a clean install before junking it.
(BTW, Hi Soybean)

[soybean]

Hi Fed.  I did swap monitors; I took the one I connected to her computer at my place to her place and that's what I left connected to her computer.  I think this is better anyway because the switch on her old monitor did not work right so she had to leave it on all the time.  But, I can take the mouse and keyboard to her place and try them too.  In addition to that, I'll leave everything else (her scanner, printer, and DSL modem) disconnected for this troubleshooting.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[dahlarbear]

For some more "data" points, you could try "Safe Mode" boot and if that's successful move on to Clean Boot.

Just on general principles you could run "chkdsk /f /r" or "chkdsk /p /r" on the disk volume(s) and then "defrag" the file system(s) (after backing up the data).

[patio]

With the pricing of systems these days i'd simply get a new machine...

[smeezekitty]

try new ram
bad ram causes mysterous problems and freezeing is a comming one

[soybean]

I'd try it with your monitor, mouse and keyboard at your Mom's place.

Thought I'd post a status report on this.  I took my mouse and keyboard to mom's place and, to my surprise, her computer worked.  Mom's old optical mouse seems to have been the cause of the problem.  With her old mouse connected, when her computer would stop at the login screen, the mouse pointer would move but left clicking on her user account did nothing.  When I connected my old corded Logitech wheel mouse, she could then login and everything worked as normal.

[patio]

God Bless Logitech...   Glad you got it solved there Soybean !