1998 Honda Civic Intermittent Stall

I have a 1998 Civic Hatchback that has an intermittent stall problem. This fault will occur sometimes several times within an hour or sometimes many days between instances. Unfortunately it is has never happened when i have been driving the car, only when my son is driving.

While driving the Engine Service light will come on and one of two things will happen:

1) the car will start to stall then service engine light will go out and the engine will recover

2)The car will stall. When this failure mode happens, the service engine light stays on. The ignition can be turned off and back on, sometimes it will restart almost immediately other times it will take several minutes. The engine will turn over when the ignition switch is turned to start but it will not catch. Normally when the ignition switch is turned to on, the service engine light will turn off after a couple of seconds and you can hear a relay or two actuate when it does. When the car cannot be started after a failure, this does not happen. The service light will stay on. There has never been a fault code recorded by the computer in the car although it has not been hooked up when the fault has happened.

Has anyone seen this before or have any ideas? The distributor has been changed.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers, Doug