APIC error

[Da Rock]

This is occurring on a linux system, but from my investigations it
wouldn't be limited to just this OS. Therefore, I come seeking wisdom
from some real gurus... only kidding. But the collective experience here
in sysadmin is greater than the experience of desktop users found on
linux lists.

I checked my dmesg today on a system which I know is failing, and found
a message regarding an apic error on cpu1 00(40). The system is a dual
core pentium.

I know the system is failing because I'm getting usb enumeration errors
(something that has come up twice before on dying systems, and has
disappeared as soon as I bought a new one), plus acpi errors in the form
of being unable to attach device data.

I understand this software unable to cope with interrupts at the cpu,
and can mean hardware failure or bad software. But given my hardware
issues I'm fairly certain its the former. My biggest question is where?
How does it come up with something like that?

Can anyone shed some light on the details of this? I'll be greatful for
whatever I can get- information is power after all.

For reference, this is an ASUS notebook which is only a few months old.
I rang the warranty support and started telling them what was going
wrong with it, but I was interrupted by the guy telling me that unless
window$ was on it they weren't even going to touch it. Needless to say I
told him to shove that philosophy where the sun don't shine, but I
thought this was strange coming from a company which has pioneered the
use of linux in the user range through the eeepc range... Fair enough if
they want window$ but they can put it on and not waste my time further
AND leave me without a machine to work with.

What I can't work out is how they are going to be able to diagnose a
problem like this easier with an OS which is a black box (almost). And
their words were that they couldn't test the device properly without
window$!