ata device crashing system in Fedora 8

Lately, my system has been crashing, fairly religiously.  I thought this was due to a VMware installation I did about the same time, and I opened a question to that effect, but now I have reason to believe otherwise.  My system is Fedora 8 x64 running kernel 2.6.23.14-107.fc8.  

Here's the last bit of my syslog (theoretically when the system crashed).

Jan 30 22:18:58 localhost kernel: ata5: EH complete
Jan 30 22:19:08 localhost kernel: ata5.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Jan 30 22:19:08 localhost kernel: ata5.01: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:20/00:00:00:00:00/b0 tag 0 cdb 0x1e data 0
Jan 30 22:19:08 localhost kernel:          res 40/00:03:00:00:20/00:00:00:00:00/b0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Jan 30 22:19:08 localhost kernel: ata5: soft resetting port
Jan 30 22:19:09 localhost kernel: ata5.01: configured for PIO0
Jan 30 22:19:09 localhost kernel: ata5: EH complete
Jan 30 22:19:19 localhost kernel: ata5.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Jan 30 22:19:19 localhost kernel: ata5.01: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:20/00:00:00:00:00/b0 tag 0 cdb 0x1e data 0
Jan 30 22:19:19 localhost kernel:          res 40/00:03:00:00:20/00:00:00:00:00/b0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Jan 30 22:19:19 localhost kernel: ata5: soft resetting port
Jan 30 22:19:20 localhost kernel: ata5.01: configured for PIO0
Jan 30 22:19:20 localhost kernel: ata5: EH complete
Jan 30 22:19:20 localhost kernel: sr 4:0:1:0: ioctl_internal_command return code = 8000002
Jan 30 22:19:20 localhost kernel:    : Sense Key : Aborted Command [current] [descriptor]
Jan 30 22:19:20 localhost kernel:    : Add. Sense: No additional sense information
Jan 30 22:21:38 localhost rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="1.19.11" x-pid="2301"][x-configInfo udpReception="No" udpPort="514" tcpReception="No" tcpPort="0"] restart

The first part, with the ata EH complete stuff repeats like six times before what I've shown.  I think it's SCSI, either the CD or HD, but this is out of my expertise.  Thanks for any help you might have on this.
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tajrobbAsked:
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arrkerr1024Commented:
I'd download the tools for your hard drive and run a full diagnostics.

This is one of the downfalls of running cutting edge hardware - it could very well be a bug in the support for your chipset as well.

Is the hard drive SATA and the CD normal IDE?  Try unplugging the CD and see if the problem goes away.
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tajrobbAuthor Commented:
I unplugged the CD, and the system seems to be stable.  That's a huge victory.  However, what is a more permanent fix for this problem?
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arrkerr1024Commented:
Get a SATA CD drive :-P.

You could try setting "combined_mode=libata" or "combined_mode=ide" as kernel parameters to use those drivers for IDE.

You could also look in your bios and see if there is anything about an IDE mode and AHCI or legacy or something along those lines and try changing that setting.
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