My latest mini-hardware problems have been solved! I think anyway. I suddenly started getting random lockups when going into 3d Games. I would start up UT2k4, or Quake3, and a few seconds in I’d hear a click from the hard drive (like a park and unpark) and then it’d go on full and my system would lock up.
My first thought was that there was something wrong with the hard drive. Even though there wasn’t any similar issues when in non-3d mode, but the video card is only a few months old, and it’s been replaced before. I ran the Maxtor utility and did quick and full system scans, no go. Under a linux boot CD a badblocks scan froze up once, but then went through the first time.
Finally today I solved it! The power supply cable that is plugged into the hard drive was also plugged into the video card. Going into 3D mode pulled that extra little bit of juice which pulled it away from the hard drive, causing it to reset and fubar everything up. Due no doubt to the less than high quality power supply. Connecting the video card to the same power cable as the CDROM seemed to solve all the problems.
I rock!