A quick entry, this.

My mother in law purchased a very nice computer sometime last year. It's been a blur. Now, she's the type to always have animated screensavers, etc. and other widgets. She doesn't (that we know) have a problem with viruses, but she does seem to have system stability issues.

The box is an HP, and it was always slow to start up, taking up to 5 minutes from power-on to log in screen. I don't know what's up.

Being the family geek, and living in the same condo complex, only the next row of homes away, I am the live-in tech support. And so I supported her computer.

I tried to troubleshoot it.

I added a firewall / router (this was when they first got it, both as a security measure, and because the machine didn't talk DHCP, so I needed something that would talk DHCP to the cable modem and talk to a static address on the computer side.)

I restored it to factory state (at which point DHCP worked.)

I removed the router.

I switched out all the cables.

Finally, I backed up her data and swapped her computer with mine.

At last, she's not had an issue with it.

Her computer is actually bigger (4GB RAM vs. 3, and a 750GB disk vs. a 500.) It's probably got a better processor, but how much do I need for web surfing?

So, in the end, I got a slightly nicer computer for my ... 20 hours spent working on that box. But what's priceless is going nearly two weeks without her calling and complaining about the computer.