Have fun with this one

I have a ’96 Civic Ex coupe and a weird problem. My car won’t start and it’s acting like the battery is low. But my wife and just been driving it and it’s a relatively new battery.

Here’s the weird part: the alarm will arm and lock and unlock the doors (sometimes), but if you try to manually lock and unlock the power locks from the door panel, it doesn’t seem to have enough juice to do it. Weird that the alarm has enough power to do the same thing that you can’t do from the door.

Possibly related problem: Before this problem, when the car would actually start, the power would occasionally go out when we were driving the car, but the car would remain running. I’m not sure if the headlights and everything would actually go off, but the car stereo and dash lights would go out. This only happened for a second and it was rare.

Well it sounds like you might have some electrical issues, i.e. bad wiring. I'd have someone you know or a garage look it over and make sure the wires are of good quality and being run efficiently. That's the only way i can see all the power cutting yet the car still mechanically running.

Also that could explain the door not performing the same task as the alarm would. I'm assuming the alarm runs power from a different wire than your door switches would. So the connection might be different allowing different power amounts for different switches, and lights in the car.