Computer Induced Headache

My mother-in-law to be was having some computer troubles and she asked me to look at it. (It was freezing at the Windows XP screen with the blue progress bar.) I picked it up about a week ago and I finally got around it looking at it last night. The first step of getting her data off was simple enough. I threw in the Ubuntu live CD and moved her files onto my 160GB portable drive.

Then I sat down to reinstall her copy of Windows. Here is where the fun began boys and girls. It froze up on the "Setup is Starting Windows" screen. I did some research online and found this [thread](http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/13533/ "Windows XP PRO freezes on "Setup is starting Windows" text screen ") which matches my problem perfectly. I must have exhausted every possible solution listed in the entire thread to no avail... And then, by complete chance, I look off to the side and see a gutted tower with only a motherboard and cpu left in it. About four hours into this at this point, I figure why not...

I rip everything out of her computer, throw it together this old case, and start her XP install again. It runs on the first try. It must have been a cpu/motherboard issue considering the only things that changed were the motherboard and cpu, and the computer had just run a Ubuntu live without any issue.

And people wonder why I stopped fixing computers on the side when I got a job after college...