Newbie in BSOD Crisis

New to the board, pardon me if this subject has been worked to death.


I've got a homemade system with the following specs:

AMD Athlon 900
512 Ram
WD 80HD
Sony 230A CD-RW
WindowsXP Home
other specs unknown

The comp worked fine for my son, he gave it to me for Xmas. In
February I got without warning BSOD Machine_Check_Exception Stop
0x00000009c
(0x00000002, 0x8053f0f0, 0xf6002000, 0x0000017a). Opened up the case,
got rid of all dust and debris, checked connections, all was well.
Until June. Same BSOD, all same parameters, and now is consistent
failure after 10 - 12 minutes of use, not even on line, with a CPU
use of under 10%. All the google-ing and MS support have just said
Ooops! Hardware failure! But how can I find out what failed? I
have added no new hardware. The power won't stay on long enough to
run any checks, and my income has been slashed too much to afford
repair shop at this point. (I spent 20 years building comps and know
my way around a little). Has anyone has this particular sequence and
have any good suggestions? The CPU is NOT overclocked.

Thanks in advance.

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