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Computer is going down hill and I don't know why

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I bought a used laptop four weeks ago and got a really good price on it but now I see why. It is a ProStar D9T laptop. It all started out with me having to install an OS and the Win XP CD didn't have drivers capable of handling the hard drives. I had to create a floppy drive with the drivers for the install CD and that solved that problem and allowed me to install XP with all needed drivers and updates. Then two weeks later the internal wireless card started to stop working. Windows would say it was working properly but it wouldn't find wireless networks any longer, even after disabling and enabling it again. I had an external Linksys wireless card that worked and allowed the laptop to get internet connections again. ProStar tech support said that the card was defective and needed to be replaced. Then this week the laptop started to freeze randomly, even to where the keyboard stopped working and has to be powered off to resolve the issue. It happens anywhere from a few minutes after the OS starts to half an hour of use and occurs with any program. I didn't install anything new for at least a week prior to the problem starting so I don't think any applications are causing the problem. I started the computer in safe mode and it stayed on for over two hours without any problems, then I started msconfig to check the startup items and the computer frooze again. The computer isn't running hot and the fans still function so heat isn't an issue. I swapped out ram chips to make sure it wasn't a bad stick but that didn't solve the problem. The laptop still frooze, so I put the original chip back in. Now I have the issue of a resource conflict on start up. "Resource Conflict - PCI Mass Storage controller on Motherboard. Bus:0A ; Device: 02: Function: 00." This stops me from even getting into the OS. What can I do?

Sorry for the long post guys but I wanted to give the full history of things. I need help to figure out what is going on with this thing. If it can be fixed with a little bit of money and time then I can deal but if the whole computer is going down the drain then I have another week to return the item. Thanks for any help.

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Go into the BIOS and reset to default settings. I'd also try to disable any extra features inside there to free up resources to push the conflict off. Try disabling the ports, nic, audio or anything else you can and see if you can get into the OS. If there are settings to play with PnP or resources then try your luck in there. When you load windows, press f8 and get it to make a boot log. If you can get into safe mode (f5) afterwards, check the boot log (google for its location) to see what it reported for the failure on the previous boot. I don't recall if the device manager shows you resource allocation in safemode but if it does, view the devices by resource type (in view menu in device manager) and look for what's sharing the resources with the PCI mass storage controller and if its something unimportant, try disabling or even uninstalling it (windows auto reinstalls on boot later) See if you have any luck with that

OK, I tried the resetting the BIOS and that didn't work. I disabled as many ports as possible and even took devices out of the boot sequence and I still get the error. I did notice that my system still preforms a RAM check at startup but I get the resource conflict at the point and time that the system tries to detect the hard drives, so I don't know if those drives might be bad. I tried pressing F1 to continue past the conflict and it gives me an "OS can't be found" error. I did a reboot and this time everything booted as normal, finding the hard drives, and I got to the Windows boot menu (safe mode, safe mode with networking, last known good config, etc) and when any of those options are choosen the system freezes up. I've restarted the computer and got into the windows CD recovery console and preforming a chkdsk /r to see if that fixes any problems. Are these issues a possibility of a hard drive problem? the system does have two drives connected by the same cable to the motherboard. It just seems odd that nothing is consistant. Sometimes it boots ok past the system configuration step and other times I get the conflict. Hopefully this recovery will fix the windows problem.

Well things are still not any better. The resource conflict still occurs quite a bit. Every now and then the conflict does not occur and the laptop detects the two internal hard drives. I can start the Windows recovery CD every time the system boots but if I received a resource conflict then the recovery CD does not see the internal hard drives and I have to restart the computer. Once I see that the hard drives are detected then I can actually use the recovery CD and it will see the drives. Now the problem is that I can't complete any operation in the recovery CD. The chkdsk /r freezes part of the way through, no matter how long I let it run. I tried to install Windows on the second hard drive to see if I could at least get the system to start but that freezes too right when it tries to format the drive. If I tell it to leave the drive file system then it will freeze when Windows attempts to load the files. Will one bad hard drive cause problems with the other hard drive since they are both connecedt with the same cable? I just can't image two identical drives would both go bad at the same time. Thanks again.
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