computer acting strange

[Jeff B]

My computer has developed some stange behaviors. One CD ejects on its own. Usually on boot. Sometimes in bios sometimes in windows.Usually only if not being used by another program. Second CD sometimes stops seeing the CD while reading or burning. The USB ports also do this. I have replaced the CPU and motherboard Now have MSI K9N4 SLI Sempron 2.01 MHz 1 Gb Ram and it still does it. If I boot with the DSL on it takes forever to boot and avast does not get turned on till last. Have done boot scan and scanned with XP booted. Have used spy bot and ad aware. Is there a virus that is being missed? Or is it a coincedence and I need to replace both CD's and the M.B. to replace the USB ports to? I have noticed if I use print preview in IE8 widows sometimes crashed but usually just IE8. I am about to wipe the hard drive and start fresh unless someone knows what is going on. If I reload with a dual boot XP/Linux setup will I be able to put Avast in XP and Linux on the same machine?

[Pondus]

Have used spy bot and ad aware.

probably not a malware problem but if you are looking for malware i would use Malwarebytes before these two

[medway01]

Hi,

Theres a lot going on with your pc   You say you have a new mother board and cpu, but what about the memory and power supply ? Is the memory a decent brand and type ( some motherboards can be picky on memory modules )and is the power supply up to the job ? These are some of the things I would look at because either *could* cause problems like this.

--
Mart

[DaveyB]

Sounds like a lot of fun things going on there Jeff. Your last sentence makes things interesting though, so lets toy with that for a minute!

Get hold of a linux live-cd and run your machine up under that for a while - see if the strange behaviour continues or if it stops completely. The Ubuntu live CD also has a set of system tests installed on it which can test your memory etc very thoroughly!  This will help to tie-break between software and hardware. If the CD tray no longer opens by itself, then there may be a problem with the drivers for it.  Given that you have replaced the mother board and CPU, the only thing left of the USB connectors is the wires in the chassis and the software.  Wires don't normally go bad, and certainly not all of them at once, so I'd put my money on the software. 

You might want to set up for a boot-time run of chkdsk and see if there's a hard drive problem that could be causing corruption of files? 

As regards a linux install, yes, you can install both on the hard drive as dual boot. If your drive is formatted with FAT you could even put them in the same partition, otherwise you can use gpartedit to adjust the partitions and make room for linux