Mystery solved?

[ellarien]

The issue with the workstation seems to be a dead fan on one of the CPUs. (I can't help feeling that there's something quaint about having two physically separate, single-core chips, these days, but even at three years old the beast is fast enough for most of my purposes.) The manufacturer is kindly sending us a couple of free replacements, even though the box is a few months out of warranty, and I should be up and running again by Thursday. This is a considerable relief; I don't mind worrying about and futzing with my personal machines, but I like the work desktop to be dependable.