[shipstylin]

I am having the exact same issue, windows was working and even when it was working you would hear something lose power and then get it back and everything would lag for that second but after that it was fine. It sounded like a hard drive so I figured either the hard drive or power supply right? Well tried both and issue still occurs. With a slightly lower wattage power supply it craps out right as it is counting up the memory. This is what I have tried with no success.

original specs: we'll call this Main PC to avoid confusion
UPS APC RS-1500 Backup Power Supply
Antec True Power II 430 watt power supply
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ 1.733 Ghz processor
Asus A7v8X motherboard
2 sticks of pc3200 memory 1-256mb 1-512mb
sony dru-810A DVD burner
Lite-on DVD-52X CD Burner Combo Drive
Create Labs Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1 Sound Card
Ultra ATA adapter PCI Card
SATA Interface Card (nothing currently attached)
WD 160GB Hard Drive (what windows xp sp2 is on)
WD 200GB Hard Drive (hooked to Ultra ATA adapter card)
WD 80GB Hard Drive
4 Port USB 2.0 PCI Card
ATI All in Wonder 9600 Pro 8X AGP Graphics card
Floppy Drive
7 or 8 usb devices plugged in

1.) tried different Power Supply (antec smart power 350 watt)
2.) Tried different hard drive (working WD 12GB with windows xp installed)
3.) accessed original hard drive through a usb to ide converter on laptop and could read everything fine no power issues
4.) removed all components so all I had left is hd, mb, cpu, memory in Main PC
5.) tried original cpu in a different working pc and everything booted up fine (Asus A7N8X-X, 512 MB PC3200) (granted this was only for maybe 15 minutes)
6.) Then took the mb from the working pc and put in Main pc with the AMD 1.733ghz and everything booted up fine and didn't hear any issues
7.) tried different power supply when everything was disconnected
8.) tried different memory (512 from working system)
9.) tried different agp video card
10.) removed thermal grease and put fresh thermal grease on


I am currently at a different location as my pc but the next two things I am going to try is taking the 1.1 Ghz AMD and putting that in, try resetting the CMOS, and maybe hooking pc directly to the wall without the UPS in between. Don't know really what else to try. Any thoughts??