both of those make sense.

Memory appears to be good, per Memtest.
Powersupply is still powering it and the numbers appear stable on HWMonitor, so I assumed it's still ok.
CPU? (do they "go" bad?) has never been moved or overclocked
I removed the video card, so it's not a consideration
the fans are all working and in fact the case has been open the whole time. also blew at a minimal amount of dust, so don't think that's the problem either.

I was leaning to mobo, but I'll check HDD to (but some of the problem have been before Post and had issues with Setup and evening trying to run a Ghost.

mobo seems most likely. are there any system checks I can perform? (I'll inspect the capacitors, but not really sure what I'm looking for (just something that looks swelled / irregular?)

new mobo I can handle, this inconsistancy and freezing is driving me nuts! I probably rebooted 25 - 30 times yesterday! NO FUN.

Can anyone recommend a good socket 478 mobo, with AGP, DDR, & IDE?