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I have red some post about pc's not booting but mine does sometimes then freezes.So i will start with what i've done:

i bought a new pc and was putting together my old pc for my wife, P4 2.4 intel board 512 rdram. So it has worked great for me for the last 3 years now, but it has been sitting in the corner for about 2 months now. anyways i bought a new keyboard mouse and speakers, put the old HD that i was using in the new pc back into the old one and started up the pc and nothing would boot. so i tried everything ( unpluged each ide card the was in the pc, unpluged the "A" drive, unpluged the cd and dvd rom, even unpluged the HD) still it would come on ( cpu fan, lights on case, lights on speaker and eithernet card lit up and HD spun), but it did not allow me to access CMOS. so i replaced the battery and voila it booted, i formated the HD installed windows Vista home and about 2 hours later the pc froze, i pushed reset and same thing happened again ( did not load at all even to get to cmos ). so then i tried a new power supply ( old one was 150 watts new one is 180 watts)and voila again it loaded. the next morning woke up and looked at the pc and it was frozzing again. did the reset and again it didnt load past cmos screen. so my only other options are Motherboard, memory, cpu !!. i can't think of anything else to try. does vista require more then 180 watts ? is it a power problem i have ? maybe to much pluged into the power bar ? i have 2 pc's runing from a 10 port power bar can that be it? , the other pc runs fine tho !!

Well if anyone else has any suggestions on what i can try next please write back, so i can get my wife off my pc and on hers !!

Hi welcome to the forum did you try removing the ram and reseating it it could be a bad contact also because the PC has a new O/S on it it may need a bios update loaded.

would a old bios not allow the pc to boot to the cmos ?, i will try the memory thing and the bios update

what about a power bar pluged into another power bar !!? would that be the problem ?

A power strip plugged into another power strip could blow a circuit breaker, but should not cause any computer problems assuming both strips are in good condition and all of the units plug into the strips are in good electrical condition. Having said that, it is not a recommended procedure.

ok i pluged the power supply into the wall it powered up than windows froze again the restarted and it would not load to cmos again. i changed the memory around and made sure it was in there tight, i also downloaded the bios update but it is an update from 2004 nothing newer then that. ( here is my board if someone knows of a new bios for it : D850mv or sometimes D850emv2 both are the same board ). so with the bios i cannot install it cause the pc will not run long enough to load it, nor can i get into the cmos !!!

With the battery having needed to be replaced, I suspect your repaired the symptom and not the cause. You might have a slow short on your motherboard that drained the battery. By replacing the battery it brought the voltage up to specs, but a short might still be draining it again. With the age of the computer, I would first clean the interior of the computer and the motherboard. If the problem continues, you could have something like a capacitor causing a slow short.

If cleaning the computer doesn't resolve your problem, and if it is a motherboard problem, it might be less expensive to buy a new motherboard than taking the computer into a repair shop. Especially given the age of the computer.

Good Luck...