(Follows on from here)
So I left my computer off for 24 hours, so that I’d have a nice stable test. I unplugged the hard drive again, and this time I plugged the DVD drive into the primary IDE interface on the motherboard (no other IDE devices connected)
Result: bad behaviour.
I then switched off and transferred the connector to the secondary IDE interface, leaving the hard drive still unplugged.
Result: more bad behaviour.
I’m pretty certain that the problem is on the motherboard. I suppose my next test is with just the hard drive plugged in, so that I can rule out the DVD drive as the culprit, but I feel like that is just a formality really. I might also try it with the power supply from Karen’s computer – a “known good” – though this power supply is actually only a year old (it was my half-hearted attempt at fixing this problem last year).
New motherboard. Question is, do I try to get a motherboard that will be compatible with my 3-year old CPU and RAM, which are perfectly sufficient for my purposes, or do I take this opportunity to get nice fresh young components. If the CPU croaks in a year’s time then I don’t really want to be tied down to a Socket A, do I?

Summoning computer geeks: Do you recognise the following symptoms?
My computer has had an ailment for a few years now. Every summer, it goes through this little period of a few months when it strops hard. From a cold boot, it will generally freeze on “Detecting IDE devices…”. And if I reset, it will probably do the same thing again. Next time I reset, it will make it a bit further along with the boot process. And the next reset will take it a bit further along still. After ten minutes of such coaxing, I will make it to the desktop. Once it’s made it this far, it’s generally stable.
Last year I swore that I’d do something about it over winter. I decided the problem was probably in the motherboard, so I’d replace that, and the processor and RAM while I was at it.
But I never did get round to it, and this summer I dealt with the problem by basically leaving the computer switched on for weeks at a time, only turning it off when I knew that I wouldn’t need it for many days.

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I’m currently reading The Lonely Dead by Michael Marshall.
Worth noting, I felt, was when I got to page 216 and encountered an instance of the word weblogs – I believe that this is the first time that I have witnessed this when reading a novel.
The novel tries to be very technically savvy and “with it”, but is actually full of inaccuracies which are apparent only to a trained eye such as my own. I’m managing to deal with it.