[Cialug] Dying commputer question

[kristau]

Skimming over your description, I had the following thoughts:
* When the motherboard and power supply were replaced, did they re-use
the old CPU and RAM?  Have you run a RAM test?  memtest86 is a boot
option on most live Linux distro disks these days.
* I'm assuming they re-used the same hard disk.  Have you run
something like SpinRite on that system?  It isn't free, but it is
worth the $89 to have a copy on hand if you work with questionable
hard drives from time to time.
* Don't assume that the motherboard and power supply are OK just
because they were the most recently replaced items.

If memtest86 shows errors, that does not rule out CPU or motherboard
issues.  If you have multiple cards of RAM, test them one at a time
(if possible -- some are required to be paired).  If each one shows
similar errors, you may have a CPU/motherboard issue -- try testing
the same RAM in a know working system.

For SpinRite, just run it at level 2.  If it finds problems it will
attempt to recover data and then mark the bad areas so they don't get
used again.  Make a backup of the data immediately if there are errors
found by SpinRite, and then replace the drive ASAP.

Best of luck!
kristau
-- 
Tired programmer
Coding late into the night
The core dump follows

My GNUPG public key is available at http://www.kristau.net/public_key.asc