Repeating Login with Mint 10 Julia

[martian46]

My laptop fried recently so I put together a PC from multiple units that were being thrown out. I ended up with a Pent 3, 100 GB IDE HD, 512 MB 133 Mhz Mem, On board AGP Graphics (not sure, Intel ?) & Sound. Julia was simple install & PC works great (Better than expected to be honest) when it decides to boot up. Even though I set up the login screen to auto me in (am only user) the login screen will keep popping up, make me sign in, give p'word, start showing desktop, tell me wireless conn is good, go back to pre-desktop screen (all grey with LM logo in center) & start all over again. Sometimes can get to desktop after 2nd try, sometimes 4, sometimes 10! When frustrated to max, hit restart button, sometimes that works 1st or 2nd time. I eventually get up & running- my patience taken to limit sometimes. When I shut down at night, sometimes shuts down normally, sometimes all functions shut down but halve to shut off machine with big button, related problem maybe? Can someone help. Haven't seen any posts with this particular problem yet, I've been searching,
Additionally, machine we're talking about here is old- Motherboard, Chipsets, even P3 are dated '99 & '00. I saw one post that said board's battery could be going. I haven't had to load setup defaults in bios though.

[martian46]

Well, I've figured out that when I boot in safe mode the machine starts like lightning with not a glitch at all. The only way it appears different is no wireless connection bar meter next to clock & volume. Internet & network are both there & fast as ever. All other functions normal. A noticeable difference in the start up process is when my desktop background comes up (which was right before it craps out & goes back to sign in screen) the picture, which is a pic in the system, not a personal photo or anything with unruley file size, does not smear horizontally in the center with identical icons on either side any more. So is this a video driver issue maybe, or a USB issue? My wireless is USB Netgear WG111v3 which I saw gave some users fits. But system shows it is there & working, only icon is gone in safe mode. I do not know how to get to any video info- type, mem size, speed , etc. only the settings in control center for animation effects & the like. Forgot to mention before that machine also has Toshiba DVD Rom & Teac CDRW Drives. I'm a newbie to Linux on advice of a friend & love it to death, the entire concept! I'm not afraid to try anything. Perhaps this is a good machine for learning on. I plan on installing on my Big, Bad Vaio when XP is unsupported or I have had it with Msoft. Hope additional info is usefull.