HELP! SYSTEM BROKEN! I-O problems appearing out of nowhere!

[youngtomedison]

I'm a recovering Windows user. I'm using Debian, Etch. The installation is about 6 months old.

Today my computer malfunctioned for no apparent reason.

After about an hour of web surfing using ICEWEASEL (with no-script and a few other anti-script/anti-java add-ons) I downloaded an MP3 from a trusted web site (wfmu.org). I used soundconverter to convert it to a WAV file. It worked just as it's done all along.

I just tried burning an audio CD using K3B. I've burned dozens of CD's with K3b with no probmens at all. This time I got an error message: "I/O error". Wouldn't burn. This did not happen immediately after I installed the no-script, etc. to ICEWEASEL.

I rebooted 3 times (cold reboot). Didn't help. I tried examining the file in Audacity. I got the following error message when I tried to start Audacity:

"There was an error initializing the audio I/O layer. You will not be able to play or record audio. Error: Host Error."

Again, cold reboots did no good.

The audio file I was trying to burn to CD plays just fine with XMMS.

What is going on? Something has gotten corrupted, but what? Did I pick up a virus while web-surfing? How can I fix whatever's wrong?

[MastaShake57]

Hmm, I/O errors are usually indicative of some sort of malfunction. Try scanning the hard disk for bad sectors and the likes. Also, testing the controllers would be a good idea. There are tons of free software on the web....

Hope that helps.