a few days ago, my computer started locking up (using ubuntu). Sometimes the keyboard leds blinked (which means a kernel panic I believe), sometimes not. I see nothing in the logfiles to help me out.

It happens on 2 different harddrives with 2 different ubuntu installs (an old gutsy install that worked for 6 months without any issues, and nothing was changed, and a brand new naked hardy install).

The strange thing is, it works completely stable of any live cd. So I suspected the harddrive(s), but I tested those with a diagnostic tool (a complete read/write/compare test), and they are fine. memory test worked out fine, as did a CPU burn in test. Its not overheatiing, PSU voltages are excellent.

I disabled all non essential things like audio, reverted to VESA driver for video, doesnt change a thing, it still freezes within minutes of use.

So Im stumped.

Anyone got an idea?

never mind, it appears to be related to a bad IDE cable, although I'm not quite sure yet and still quite confused. But after removing all other drives and replacing the cables at least the old Ubuntu disk appears to work fine again.