Still having problems...

Well i'm off to Looseheads again tonight to see if i can finally fix this PC problem.

The PSU and a new HD arrived in the post yesterday. He's already installed the new PSU, which to all accounts is performing nicely, but unfortunately the PSU wasn't the cause of the problem.
In-fact from what he's told me the noises the machine is making would indicate that the problem is worse with the more stable power supply. Odd i think.
However i'll be over there tonight to replace the HDD and once again completely re-install windows.
I'm getting concerned now though.. he is suggesting the HDD is failing because of the noises made during disk access, but personally i've never heard "system" beeps when a HDD is going. In-fact when they've failed on me in the past i've never actually been able to get the machine to boot.

His problem is still the same, the PC will boot then run anything from 1 minute - 7 hours without a problem and then it'll freeze. Loose is suggesting that this is during "disk" access hence his blaming the HDD. However i've done disk checks on it and virus checks but i can't find a single issue. God knows, i'm just crossing my fingers the format and re-install works.
Otherwise it's going to be a case of replacing each item individually until it fires up properly, and frankly if we're going to do that he might aswell pick up something decent, my old Athlon XP 3000+ is looking tired next to some of the modern dual core stuff.

I'm looking at replacing my Opty 144 1800 with a Dual Core X2 4800+ (939) if i can put the money together to afford it. i figure it's easier to do that and remain on the AV8, than move over to a PCI express board which would probably necessitate new CPU/Mobo/gfx card/possibly RAM and ideally a pair of sata hdd's.
Though that's much more expensive than i can afford. much easier just to find £150 for a new chip as an upgrade than to completely replace the whole innards of the case. :/

Anyway fingers crossed i'll have loose's machine up, running and fixed tonight.