My newest machine has started to play up in a new manner, ideas invited.
It is about 18 months old and has always had the odd BSOD stop, but this is new. Running a fully patched XP.
Yesterday I started to install Visual Studio .NET on the machine, (and anyone who says it is a MS problem will just get ignored!). A couple of minutes into the first disk, the machine froze, I was unable to do anything other then press the button. I tried again, the same thing happened, although not on te same file. Trying about 6 times, it never got passed the first disk. Always, just before the system froze, there was a "pop" noise, for want of a better description, sounded like it was the disk drive, (MAXTOR 6L040J2). There is nothing being written to the system log files.
I figured the disk may be crapping out so I booted into Caldera and ran the Maxtor PowerMax disk diagnostics. Perfect, I did the heavy test which really excercises the disk and the controller, again, no problems.
I tried the install again, same problem. I tried it again, but this time, instead of using the CD writer, I used the DVD drive which is slower. This time it installed and got part way through the MSDN install before it did the same thing. Anyway, since then, the machine has frozen a couple of times without provocation.
I believe the mainboard is still alive as there is periodic activity on the disk LED as if it is trying to talk to it, but Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work.
Suggestions?