A hard freeze occurs after a couple hours of use, and a visible check shows one black/burnt tip on power supply connector at motherboard. An error msg sometimes accompanies this freeze. The error msg states: kernel_data_inpage_error.
Wow, never heard of that, if you had a burnt out connector I'm suprised your system is still working..I would say your PSU is dying..other may be more insightful though....
The black/burnt tip indicates a loose contact. Take that connector out and see if you can either crimp the (blackened) pin tighter on that corresponding wire, or solder it to make a proper connection.
Clean it up and retry.
This problem occurs on a system where Windows XP is installed on a hard disk that is configured as a slave, and no other device is connected to the same IDE controller channel (primary or secondary). Microsoft has something to offer on this subject ...http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330100...