Technical question

I've got a question for some of you techies out there for an issue that, frankly, has us stumped.

The sound on atara's computer cuts out, but only in very specific circumstances. Once it cuts out the only way she can restore it is by rebooting her machine - a soft reboot usually suffices.

Anyway, it cuts out when the cat jumps down from her desk. Not any cat, just Merry. Also it doesn't cut out every time Merry jumps down from her desk either, it only does it when she has the ceramic heater behind her running. Actually this is an improvement over last winter when having Merry run past her computer would, at various times, cause it to lose its sound, lock up, or spontaneously reboot.

Nothing else causes this to happen. We can walk, stomp or tip-toe past the computer all we want and it won't cut out. I can jostle and bump the machine and it won't cut out. We can drop things on the floor and it won't cut out.

But when Merry jumps down from the desk, and the heater is running, her sound cuts out until she reboots.

So my question is: what's going on and how do we fix it?

If it's any help, we replaced her video card between then and now.

Year In Pictures: 2010/12/05 - Snow Apples

Because there's not already a huge library of mediocre faux Lomography out there, I decided to create some of my own (and also show off that we got more fresh snow this weekend).


Shot at f/9.0 at 1/80th of a second using the 50mm lens at an ISO of 100. Did a bit of colour correction, and brightened it overall a bit when I converted it from NEF, then I boosted the contrast in the red and green colour channels by about 35 and applied a vignette effect. Given how I was planning to bend the colours anyway, I suppose I could have saved myself a bit of work on the initial colour correction.