Boot process hangs - mb failure?

Hi,



Had a hard time deciding in which forum to post, but this one seems to fit best. It involves Linux, but I suspect the problem is hardware related rather than OS related. You decide...



I'm running openSuSE 10.2 32-bit on an ASUS AN8-32 Deluxe board. I frequently have problems when booting; the process hangs at random points, so I have to hit reset. Now I got an (linux) FDisk error which basically means that it can't access the file systems upon booting.



I've had this problem before, and fixed it by replacing a SATA cable. But it doesn't seem to fix it this time.



I just ran Samsung's HUTIL Surface Scan diagnostics on all 4-disks, and all tests passed. Each disk takes about an hour to complete, so I guess the testing is pretty thorough.



Does anyone see any rational possibility of this being a motherboard or SATA controller failure? I doubt it since the disk diagnostics passed, but is it possible nonetheless?

Do you use any other operating system other than Linux =_=. I highly doubt that its motherboard failure.

No other OS on this machine. But I'm thinking about ordering a copy of Windows. This whole process of reinstalling every month or two is getting old. I'm still hopeful that the problem is due to hardware, rather than OS.