This has been going on for about a year now and I'm just about to replace my pc with a new one but I want to give it a second chance before I sell it for spares.
Firstly my pioneer cdr wouldn't work, I checked the connections and reinstalled the drivers but it just wouldn't work, then my cpu froze completely (and the cpu light went off) and all the lights on my cd drives came on, when they turned off the computer went back to normal - this kept happening every time I started up.
Then XP became unstable, starting up takes over half an hour and then the computer freezes so I restart it, then it works ok but very slowly for a while until the drive lights go crazy and it freezes completely.
I have a new version of XP that I want to install because I do think that it's a software problem but I have no idea how to reset my computer back to factory settings (I don't mind wiping everything off - I have all my stuff on an ext hd) I've tried booting from the OS disk but it tells me that there's already a version of windows running.
Any help would be fantastic, otherwise it's just going to be ripped apart and sold as scrap.