I mostly meant the power cable that's going into your hard drive. It the power supply is flaky, you should be hearing the CPU fan switching on and off whenever the computer shuts down.
As for firmware, most recent firmware upgrade programs run from windows, and you REALLY don't want to be in the middle of one when your system reboots. I wouldn't mess with that, myself.
EDIT - Oh, I just read Catty's post. I somehow missed it when I first replied. You can get to the Nforce firmware info from the Device Manager (right click the 'My Computer' icon, Properties, the Hardware tab), but I can't pinpoint it further than that 'cause I'm not using an Nforce board myself. You would have to find the Nforce chip and do a properties on that to find out the version - and that's probably going to take you more than 2 minutes unless you know where to look. Perhaps Catty can tell you better than that.
OR, you can look up the specs for your specific motherboard on the internet. If you know the exact make and model, it should be part of the basic motherboard specs (somwhere, I would hope).
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84
As for firmware, most recent firmware upgrade programs run from windows, and you REALLY don't want to be in the middle of one when your system reboots. I wouldn't mess with that, myself.
EDIT - Oh, I just read Catty's post. I somehow missed it when I first replied. You can get to the Nforce firmware info from the Device Manager (right click the 'My Computer' icon, Properties, the Hardware tab), but I can't pinpoint it further than that 'cause I'm not using an Nforce board myself. You would have to find the Nforce chip and do a properties on that to find out the version - and that's probably going to take you more than 2 minutes unless you know where to look. Perhaps Catty can tell you better than that.
OR, you can look up the specs for your specific motherboard on the internet. If you know the exact make and model, it should be part of the basic motherboard specs (somwhere, I would hope).
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84