Yesterday, the bother was running his PC as normal when it froze up and wouldn't display any windows in the browser (Firefox 3, not sure the exact version). He attempted to fix the problem by rebooting the computer, but the restart hung in the BIOS and then went through to the 'Safe Mode' screen. No restore point are available, but I was able to boot into Safe Mode without networking' and the load screen showed various files, all refering to drivers of one sort or another (haven't been record the exact file names as yet). After defraging the HDD in Safe Mode while I was out today, I attempted to boot an Ubuntu disk I have as a diagnostic spare (Unsure, but likely to be Hardy Heron), it wouldn't boot as a LiveCD throwing up a stream of errors 'Buffer IO error on device fd). logical block 0' this repeated several times with various numbers including 209.985325] and 222.135677] and reaching 472.612238] before I restarted using the CTRL+ALT+DEL command. Currently running MemTest 86+ v1.70 off the same disc as of time of posting data is as follows: L1 Cache 64K @ 49176MB/s, L2 (nothing), Memory 4095MB @ 19606MB/s Chipset (nothing). Pass 21%. Running Test 8. WallTime 0:32:32, Cached 4095MB, RsvdMem 636KB MemMap e820-Std Cache on, ECC off, Test Std Pass 0 Errors 0. I initially put it down to a drivers and/or Windows issue (we've had issues with the LAN drivers before) and was planning on reinstalling Windows on a new HDD, but I'm wondering - given Ubuntu boot failure - if the mobo itself might be damaged). I've not had the side off, but it runs very cool and doesn't have an obvious amount of dust on the areas I could see thru the case grills). My build is as follows: iBUILD™ Intel Gaming PC All Rounder Premium ATX Midi Tower Case Corsair 750Watt PSU (actually equivalent Seasonic) ASUS P5Q Intel® Core™2 Duo E8400 Dual Core 2x3GHz 6MB cache (factory clocked) Standard CPU Cooling Fan Samsung 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz (factory clocked, 6-6-6-12 per PowerC website) Hitachi HDS721032CLA362 320GB 7200RPM SATA II Samsung SH-S223 22x DVD RW Black SATA nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB Microsoft Windows XP SP3 Home (fully patched) Built-in audio Internal Card Reader 26 in 1
