This is obviously going to be a guess, as most things are when
troubleshooting, but this might give you a few ideas.
Personally, I would enter the bios and try to set everything to defaults as
something may be conflicting on start up. (Sometimes people don't admit when
they've been altering settings in the bios)
If that makes no difference, I would try changing the RAM, as that could
possibly be your problem. I'm probably a bit obsessed with RAM just lately,
but then that's because I've looked at so many computers which have turned
out to have RAM problems.
You don't say whether it has onboard sound and video, but I do know from
experience that 128mb RAM combined with onboard sound & video (and in my
case, onboard LAN) doesn't leave alot of RAM spare, which can cause the
system to be very sluggish. (I'm going by xp pro, which I'm sure would have
a very similar outcome as xp home)
I'm wondering if the RAM may be beginning to fail periodically also.
Hopefully, these suggestions may solve your problem, but, if not, it might
help to point you in the right direction.
Good luck, I'm sure there will be many more suggestions to help you along
the way.
Michele Sayer

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