Dead...Not dead...Dead...Not dead........

I've been having a nightmare with my PC this weekend (see my earlier post). Whatever, the issue is, I'm not confident I've resolved it. I do currently have a working PC, but there again I have at several points over the weekend, only for it to freeze and fail to boot up properly several times.

I've completely recovered to scratch at least twice so far, and believe me it's a pain realising

a) how much crap somes on a standard shipped PC World PC that you need to get rid of before you can even think about useful apps
b) how may applications I actually had installed that need to be reinstalled
c) I've forgotten all the network settings (or how to connect my small home network together)!

Still, so far I've been "stable" for about ooh, 3 hours now and reinstalled all my "critical" apps - Office, Serif WebPlus X2, Photoshop Elements, Firefox, AVG antivirus, Zone Alarm firewall and a few other bits and bobs and got the network back up and connected all PC's (well all right - two PC's).

I've no idea what the problem was/is. I've narrowed it down (through gut instinct rather than any scientific basis) to being one of, problems with:

• The BIOS (looking around the 'net to see whether it's worth flashing to the latest)
• The hard disk itself - but I'm not sure about this
  
• the hard disk controller
• a knackered motherboard

I'm not yet ready to splash the cash on a new PC, but much more of this and I'll have to think about it seriously. Let's see how it goes over the next few days.

The other thing it's brought home is the importance of a decent backup.