Hmm, I think I'll try it via forum support a bit longer. Most of the time more people start pooring in who are more knowledgable about certain hardware side-effects.

Does your system even run after booting, or does the error occure before X (the graphical stuff) is started? If it boots, could you try the cheatcode "knoppix 2" (== command-line only mode)? And enter the above commands? You could even store them on a floppy:
Code:
sudo su
mount /floppy
hdparm -iI /dev/hda > /floppy/hdparm.txt
lspci -v > /floppy/lspci.txt