Old PC Blues: Acts weirdly, no fix in sight Help please!

[TheGibMaker]

I have a 7 year old HCL PC (Asus P5VD2-VM, Intel Celeron D 3.33GHz (Some geriatric model), 2GBs of Aftermarket RAM, Radeon HD 5450 1GB 650MHz GPU) Which has been giving me Grief. It boots into Windows 8 desktop, then explorer.exe spikes in activity and everything but the cursor freezes. No BSoD. I cold reboot, and it says "HDD not detected". I don't touch it out of dread for a day or two, and i believe the CMOS Resets (it does that thing where even with a new battery the CMOS resets every once in a while). Rinse, repeat.

So out of sheer frustration, i decide to format it. Error something or the other Windows 8 disk is not authorized to do diddly-squat to your stuff. Praise MS. I figure, like most of us "LINUX!!". Cue Hiren's Boot CD. Both linux and mini windows xp refuse to boot. The linux environment gets kernel panic, and bugger me if i can figure out what's wrong with windows.

Any of you know what's wrong with it? Help me please, i am up the wall already on this one. Thanks in advance!

 

[harshilsharma63]

Try to run memtest for about an hour.

 

[TheGibMaker]

RAM's fine; All 2 gigs of it. I think it's the motherboard or SMPS. The thing is, I don't wanna be electrocuted, and I don't wanna further screw up the motherboard. So no homebrew solutions. Anyone else know anything?

 

[maheshn]

RAM's fine; All 2 gigs of it. I think it's the motherboard or SMPS. The thing is, I don't wanna be electrocuted, and I don't wanna further screw up the motherboard. So no homebrew solutions. Anyone else know anything?

If you have access to one, try connecting any alternate good quality PSU to check up. If still no change, then its' the motherboard.

 

[TheGibMaker]

Well I decided that it was more trouble than it was worth, hence will be buying a laptop in the stead. *grumbles* Thanks for nothing. Mods feel free close thread.