Life expectancy of ECS mobo <1 year?!

July 2001 bought Computech(?) Athlon 1.3 GHz and ECS K7SEM. Less than a year old it broke, July 2002 I bought Athlon 2000 XP and ECS K7S5A ...

Which ECS should I buy now ?! Oh, hang on I guess I should not buy an ECS any more!!!

Here is what happened this time:
Remember Windows update (WinXP Home) telling me some update was available, IE rollup sec. patch and some SIS - installed and rebooted without thinking... Next thing every time I boot sound does not work - sure thing the built in Sound card works but not my Sound Blaster Live Value... I unsinstall it reboot - same story. Until I disabled it.. BUT, my computer ofter vary soon after bootiung and loging in no matter what I do at the time), freezes and I cant shut down / restart - I have to pull the power cable... I guess I did that more and more and now:
- With my "new" power supply (350W) I freeze (hang) even in BIOS, or during boot, or after boot - and worse yet - I can get Video Card (Leadteck WinFast A250) to POST 1:20 tries (try reseeting video card, memory disc. and reconect power supply to mobo - no good)!
- With my "old" power supply (250W) I crash during boot every time!
- Go back to "new" PS - Video card posts - I boot - but crash after a minute in Windows...

Time for new Mobo ?
Which one is good for Athlon 2000 XP and 2x256 Mb 2700 DDR RAM (not going to upgrade that now)...? I know there are new and cool stuff reviewed and debated here but I don't really need nothing fancy, have descent CPU, ok RAM, nice Video card and ok Sound card (even NIC but theya allways built in now)... What should I but for $100 or so?

Thanks!!!