>Really? It seems to be getting juice. It just won't let me do anything useful ;-)
>
>I HATE hardware.
>
>
>>I'm thinking it is the power supply.

If you're uncomfortable with hardware, take it to a Geek Squad or equivalent and get them to diagnose it. It definitely sounds like a hardware failure; since it isn't intermittent it'll be relatively easy for them to track it down by swapping out components.

If you're not afraid to pop the case and do a little messing around, you could try:

1. Make sure fans are actually turning (power supply and CPU at least; also case fan(s) if present). If not, could be a quick diagnosis and cheap fix

2. Simplify the PC and see if it'll boot: disconnect everything from the outside of the case except power cord, keyboard, and video. In the case, disconnect optical drive(s), floppy drive, other peripheral devices, and remove any add-in cards in expansion slots except for video.

3. If it'll boot in simplified mode, start adding devices back in, half of them at a time (i.e. binary-tree approach). For example, if you removed/disconnected 8 devices, reattach half of them (4). If it boots, the problem is in the other 4 devices. If not, disconnect 2 of the ones you reconnected, and so on.

4. If it won't boot even in simplified mode, disconnect the HD, reconnect the optical drive and see if you can boot from a CD like the XP setup CD.

5. If you can boot from a CD but not from HD, the HD may be failed or failing.

6. If you can't boot from a CD you have a critical hardware failure, one or more of:

- power supply: try swapping one from another machine in its place. They go bad more often than you'd think; I replaced 2 just today at one client
- motherboard component: difficult to diagnose, impossible to fix (new mobo required)
- system RAM: if you have RAM that is on 2 or more sticks, you could try removing half i.e. try with just one stick, or just the other stick to see if one of them is bad
- video controller or video RAM: not a lot you can do here. One possibility is to boot into command-line only (press F8 while booting and choose that option from the menu). If that actually works (which requires almost no video RAM) then video RAM may be suspect, especially if your video controller is a separate card. If it's "integrated" video (which uses part of your main RAM for its buffer) this won't apply. If you have both integrated video (on the motherboard) and an add-in card, try removing the add-in card and using just the integrated video