A day late, A computer short

So I have a nice pentium with a decent modem on it downstairs, and instead I'm relegated to trying to create posts with this nasty old laptap via a 19.2 connection while sitting at my second hand kitchen table (which used to be the conference table for the Third District Nurses Association, sort of the local union, but not quite). For a while I thought maybe the problem was my phone lines, but this old piece of junk never loses its connection and the one down stairs does nothing but lose its connection about every three minutes. I guess I should have known, if you can maintain a telephone conversation, you should be able to maintain a data connection. That means the only thing it can be is the computer itself and that's distressing - no viruses, so there's just something intrinsically wrong with it - I thought for a while it might be the graphics card, but heck if I know why a bad graphics card might create an issue with my modem connection. I know it's not the hard drive (ghosted and replaced) or the memory (which all seems to be registering as there, active and healthy), so it has to be something conflicting with something else and redoing all the ports and IRQs that the hardware was associated with didn't do anything last time and the system monitor doesn't show anything in particular sucking up all the CPU, so I'm starting to think it's just schizophrenic and I should worry about finding a new machine for $450 and use that one as some sort of fileserver for photos. I wouldn't feel so bad about it if it weren't the fact that the thing has been almost unusable from a gaming perspective and video perspective (for the MPEGs of Eryn) for the last year and half - pretty much since we moved it from the duplex in Richfield. I could simply clean it completely and start from scratch, but that sounds like a headache beyond imagining.