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Dear Helen and Giles, Over the weekend I completely disassembled the PC, cleaned out all of the contacts with the compressed air and put it back together again. Unfortunately it hasn't fixed the freezing issue, nor the audio initialization issue for that matter. > Many decades of experience building my own computers suggests to me > that this Alt-SysRq responsiveness points to your power supply to the > hdd being marginal. Things to check are the output level of your power > supply, whether you might have connected too many power hungry > components such as big graphics cards, or are overclocking anything > and so increasing the current requirement. That might be a key clue; thank you. Although I cannot quite remember how or when the problem started, it might coincide with installing a fairly power-hungry GPU, namely an AMD Radeon HD 7770, which apparently has a TDP of 80 watts (I bought it second-hand so I don't have the original manual to confirm this). It's powered via a 6-pin connector for which I had to purchase an adapter, so maybe this is indeed just a bit too much for the power supply, which is marked as being able to put out up to 500 watts in total. > Also of course check the power connection to the hdd is good. If your > power supply is being intermittently asked to supply its peak current > output, then the result will be that your operating system will for a > brief moment lose communication with your hdd, and loses registration > with the filing system and so become unresponsive to anything except > functions coded in the linux kernel. The functions of your window > manager are not coded in the kernel, and so cease to be responsive. I'm not sure how I could check the connection from the power supply to the drive, although if you are just meaning to check for a loose connection where the cable plugs into the drive itself, I did this as part of reassembling the computer earlier. Currently I have one 256GB solid-state drive connected, but since the power supply is not one of the modular kind I wouldn't be able to replace the power cable. > So make sure that the peak total current requirement of your system > is never anywhere near the peak power output of your power supply. > Of course this might also point to a faulty power supply if you have > applied Ohm's Law to your design and it still goes dead at times. > > Best wishes from an ancient computing engineer from the Sixties! Thanks again for the help so far! It might be time to purchase a better power supply then; the case is more than big enough for a larger one, and the PC's present one has some rattly bits so I won't mourn its loss too much :) Best wishes, Sebastian -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG FAQ: https://www.dcglug.org.uk/faq/