Acer :: Aspire 5050 Loosing HDD And DVD Drive In XP & Crash

My 5050 crashes XP every few minutes, maybe half hour sometimes with an 0x07 blue screen.

I have temporarily taken to booting ubuntu (llinux OS) off a USB pen drive and it works fine, however, i might well see the HDD and DVD drive in Ubuntu but its not long before they dissapear from the visibilty of the OS. Of course this would be a crash in XP but not under these circumstances.

I can hear that the hdd is running and the cd drive will open so its not a power issue or temps.

I think the mobo ide controller is falling over or connections associated with it.

I cannot identify the ide controller (if it is a seperate component to the mobo itself) or investigate problem further without some knowledge & ideas from experianced members here.

Even trying to take this notebook apart seemed difficult & I gave up after a few screws were out. Anyone got a strip down guide/service manual and more importantly some ideas on my fault.

At first I was thinking of maybe a dry joint on the HDD connection but that was before I ran Linux OS and discovered I was actually losing visibility of both IDE hardwares. Not just the HDD, and not losing power either.