Off Topic: Got Thief:DS to work again!

My computer is still acting odd, but at least I was able to get Thief:DS to run again. Thief wasn't starting correctly, hanging on a blank screen when I ran the executable. Turns out I had DirectX configured to run in debug mode on my system, and that was causing the problem for whatever reason.

Still got that weird interrupts problem, though. I tried disabling USB in my BIOS, per several internet posts that suggested it can be the cause of excessive context switching, but it didn't seem to solve the trick. I worry that my hard drive really is going bad: no matter how many times I chkdsk, I get errors every time, and chkdsk /f reports no bad sectors. Maybe my IDE controller is hosed, or my motherboard is dying. Groan.