Solved - thank you all for these answers.
I'm guessing it is only the motherboard. It's a P5VDC-X made by Asus and unfortunately they don't seem to be available, even on Ebay. Is it...
I have no idea what ESD problems are? Yes, the capacitors are bulging and look like they are blown :-(
I have an oldist PC running XP Pro x64 which up to now has been running really well, particularly since I installed a 1TB sata hard drive a year...
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