Lots of errors in Event Viewer (XP Home)

WinXP Home - SP3 - Bear with me, this is a long post..... some quick history: this PC has been brought to me 3 or 4 times in the past 10 days. The owner has continually said "it doesn't power up all the time" and "it locks up at random" and "it'll be OK for five minutes, then go real real slow for 10 minutes, then go back to normal, then get slow, etc" and so on. EVERY SINGLE TIME that I've looked at the PC, it has run perfectly: no power up issues (not once), no locking up, no erroneous slow downs, no problems, period. So he takes it home, and within a day or two, he brings it back. I have (of course) run malware scans, re-installed drivers (even though everything was running fine), performed full maintenance (CCleaner, defrags, Windows Updates, etc), run full diagnostics on the hard drive and RAM (always passes 100%)..... Here's some technical info from the Event Viewer:

. . . and when I click on the "go.microsoft" link, I get this message:

In the screen shot below, you can see that between each red "X" atapi error, there's an
"Information" entry for i8042prt and the info for that says this:

. . . . and when I click on the "go.microsoft" link, I get this info:

Is there any chance that these events (the atapi error and the i8042prt info message) are related?
There's several sections from different days in the Event Viewer with chunks of messages identical to the screen shot below,
they apparently been happening for some time. The owner of the PC says he has all types of problems at home, but when the
PC is here in my shop, we have no issues: the PC turns on, runs fine, never locks up, everything is OK, but when the guy
takes it home, the :crap hits the fan. I'm thinking his keyboard and/or mouse are likely responsible for at least the
i8042prt errors, but could a faulty mouse also cause issues like those above?
:confused

Any input will be greatly appreciated!
THANKS!

 

No doubt you have also googled to try to find an answer, -I don't have the answer, but, did you try using it on the web, to see if the fault showed up, then ?
I know XP is pretty good with IRQ allocation, but have you checked for conflicts?
Those two points seem to be brought up when this happens.
Is he using wireless for the internet, -bad signal ?
If it does not show on yours on the internet- is there a problem being caused by his router?

I hope this jogs the memory a bit, as my favourite saying, as a comparative novice compred to some on majorgeeks, is
Sometimes the obvious eludes us.

 

@ baklogic: I've done some Googling, and found so many different things that nothing really helped. It works fine on the 'net (wired, there's no wifi).

That's my middle name! roflmao

@ plodr: The mobo has one IDE port running the DVDRW; the HD is on SATA, and there are 4 total SATA ports (the HD using one) and they're all empty except for the one in use. I told him to buy a QUALITY power strip or even better a UPS. I did sell him a new KB/Mouse so hopefully that will at least help. I tested the DVDRW drive extensively: playing movies and music CDs, video CDs, data CD/DVDs, burning everything, and never had one single issue...

After checking my shop work logs and comparing them to the dates and times in the Event Viewer, I noticed that NONE of the red "X" errors happened when I had the PC! NOT ONE!!! They all happened when he had the PC at his house, so it MUST be something there. I told him to run it for a few days with NOTHING but the new keyboard and mouse plugged in: no joystick or game controller, no printer (unless really necessary), no flash drives, nothing. I said "bring it in after 3-4 days and we'll check the Event logs". So I guess we'll see....

Thanks for the input.... I may revive this thread on Friday! LOL