This started out as an annoying “PC won’t start” problem.

I say annoying because I saw no problem after 1 hour in front of the PC.

So I did some tuning and some stress testing during that time.

About 2 weeks later I’m called back again, as the PC is not starting again.

This time I can see the problem: PC gets most of the way to starting XP, and then re-starts.

I’m tempted to say: power supply.

But I decide to try safe mode first: and safe mode works perfectly.

OK, at the next restart, I hit F8, and then choose: “disable automatic restart…”

Now I get to see the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

The important bits are: 0X000000EA ati2dvag.dll

Now its obvious: its the ATI video card.

I replace it with an Nvidia card, but now the PC refuses to start at all.

Hmmm, I take a closer look at the case and AGP slot, and it looks like the MOBO and case are slightly out of alignment… the AGP card doesn’t slide in as easily as it should.

After some careful adjustments, I eventually get the card to slide in correctly, and the PC start correctly.

I run the kids “spiderman” game for a few minutes to make sure, and I have no further problems!