Computer not working properly: Could the Motherboard be the problem

I bought and buttembled all the pieces of my computer. The main components are: *VIA KT600 400 KT6V-LSR *Maxtor Diammond Sata 80 GB Drive. *Athlon Xp 3200+ Barton

The installed OS is Ubuntu. Very often this computer freezes or restarts X or the computer itself. I think that this has to do with the motherboard. I say this because there are certain things that the motherboard does not seem to be doing how it is suppose to. First, I have noticed that whenever I install Ubuntu, a fresh copy, the grub menu that it creates points to hd1,0 as the root parbreastion. However, I have noticed that the actual root parbreastion is located in hd0,0. This tells me that for some reason the motherboard is not telling linux the truth about the order of the hard drives. While running Linux I have ran the grub shell , and manually grub suggests that the root is in the hd1,0 as well, so is not a problem of the installation. It looks like it is a problem of the motherboard.

As far as the computer freezing and restarting, I have tried searching the log files: xsession-errors,var-log-gdmfolder,var-log-messages, and cannot seem to find anything regarding the reached state. I think that this problem also has to do with the board, and that it may also related to a Pata Hard drive that I own. The motherboard seems to detect it sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't. I do not know whether the hard drive has problems of its own or the motherboard is the one neglecting it. I thought that the Pata was conflicting somehow with the Sata because when I first started using it, I could not even select SATA as the primary boot device in the bios, which lead me to think of a conflict.

I am trying to decide whether I should buy another motherboard, of course, if it turns out to be the problem; as of now, I am not sure. What do you think? Could it be the motherboard? Should I buy another one?

I would like to thank you in advance for your time, THANKS!!!

Iv‡n C. Filpo