After almost a year of disaster with this computer that I might have been ripped off from craigslist, I may have resolved the issue.
All the resolutions that I had come up with have failed from time to time. Except this, eventhough I'm still in the process of reinstalling Windows XP, it seems to work through all the "sighing" points. I think this is it.
Ah yes. So what is the problem? I believe it is something I have, quite unbelievably, missed. It seems that all the rest of the original components and parts are fine except the fan for the CPU. It has only 1 side of the metallic hook which secures it on the CPU so that the CPU would not overheat. And without the other hook, this have made it difficult to be able to completely attach its surface to the entire surface area of the CPU. The single hook has caused such imbalance. So I removed it and just hardly pressed it onto the CPU so that it stuck to the CPU with whatever's left of the thermal paste on the CPU.
I did not even notice the missing hook of the CPU fan. Well, the lost of time, a few months, and money spent on the extra but now ready-to-be-sold parts, I do consider worthwhile because I learned something or rather something I have realized to take note of.
If I was ripped off when I bought this, then I have learned something he has not. His brother, if that is really his brother, has even asked me to hang out together since we are into the tech stuff. I may just do that, if I could find that email address in my gmail archive. Then again, it could have been caused by a minor accident which lost the pin while moving the tower to my place, could it not? Hardly. It may not be something so easily missed since he gave me a free ride home.
Now I'd just have to find a second hook. Otherwise, it's not so assured.
[@more@]
Seems that after replacing a graphic card with working gpu fan, the system still restarts very often when there seems to be heavy load ie. flash video playing, external HDD load, etc. I've tried so many thing else, replacing a good cpu fan, etc. The only time that it seems to work flawlessly was when I open the winter window decreasing the room temperature significantly. Perhaps the absence of thermal grease/paste between CPU and CPU Fan is the cause of the problem. I'm ordering Arctic silver 5, hope this solves to restarting issue.
According to my online research, a new power cord may solve the problem...Will try this after applying the heat paste compound.