Oh boy, have I been having fun lately. My main DAW PC starting acting weirdly - rebooting spontaneously, shutting down unexpectedly etc. etc. So for the last two months I have been trying to figure out what the hell is going on. My 1st hard drive crashed at one point and I had to reload the operating system. Then all the different software packages and virtual instruments have to be re-installed. This is going to take months to complete. We are talking hundreds of different instruments, software packages etc. etc. One instrument alone took 38 hours to re-install from the web - Omnisphere 2. Fortunately my secondary drives were still intact so I have not lost any of the original music projects - yet! So I started with the power supply - tested it but could not find any problem with the voltages or any signs of overheating etc. etc. Then I started disconnecting peripheral devices one by one starting with all the instruments & sound modules on the MIDI network - no good. Disconnected the internal CD drive - no good. Changed out all the RAM modules - no good. Disconnected all monitoring speakers - both nearfield and normal ones - no good. Checked all the cabling and other bits and pieces in the studio - no good. Changed out mice, keyboard, USB hubs etc. etc. - no good. So I was stumped. The PC was still acting like a petulant child every now and then and I risked damaging the main hard drive all over gain so I cloned the drive and stored the image on a NAS device - just in case. At one point, while the PC was actually behaving I was listening to a piece of music - The 'Seconds Out' remastered album by Genesis and I thought somebody has screwed up the remastering because I could hear a distinct 'click', very faintly every now and then in the background, and not at regular intervals either. And then I realised where the problem was coming from. My main sound module was starting to pack up and was causing the problem. At times it would work fine for hours on end and at other times it would just throw all the toys out the cot repeatedly. Disconnected the sound module permanently and used another audio device that I have in a piece of gear I don't ever use. Problem solved!!! Hallelujah. When I opened up the sound module there was one capacitor on the main board that was starting to burst open - the root cause of all the trouble. It now lives happily in file 13 land. And I have now been able to quit the therapy sessions...
Somewhere between right and wrong there is a garden. I will meet you there - Rumi