[ale] Losing stability

[Christopher Fowler]

I've written off older hardware because I've lost old hardware recently.
It just seems like PC these days aren't able to go much past 3 or 4
years.  A troubling fact.

Could be the following:

1.  Bad CD drive (Remove it)
2.  Bad hard drive (Try a new one)


I had a machine behave like this and the conclusion was that it was a
bad disk.  The problem was that the disk holding swap was bad and when
the drive kept retrying the system would appear to "hang".  Sometimes
even reboot.  One idea is to not use swap and force everything in
memory.  Not sure if 512mb is enough these days with GNOME and other
crap running.


On Mon, 2006-10-30 at 09:25 -0500, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> My main box at home is having Serious Troubles.  On startup it often
> will hang (no screen output) with the CD light lit steady until I
> press & hold the "off" switch to retry. Other behaviors include
> appearing to start up and then emitting random beeps through the
> speaker with no screen output, or giving random core dumps on various
> scripts in /etc/init.d.  I've also experienced  spontaneous reboots
> and random hangs/program failures in X windows.  The "memory speed"
> number given in the initial startup screen sometimes changes from
> boot-up to boot-up as well.  The system is a home-brew about 4 years
> old and lightly used; leadtek WinFast K-series MB, athlon chip, cheap
> simple video card, single 512 MB DRAM stick. Processor temperatures
> appear to be within acceptable ranges, at least according to the
> "syshealth" part of the BIOS. I've enabled the full memory test in the
> POST, but so far that hasn't picked up any problems.
> 
> I'm thinking that the problem is either memory or motherboard. I've
> removed, air-blasted, and re-seated the memory stick in a new slot
> without change in behavior. At  this point I'm considering getting
> some new memory and, if that doesn't change the behavior, replacing
> the motherboard.  
> 
> Does this seem reasonable? The clock appears steady, so I'm assuming
> the BIOS battery is OK, but perhaps that's a factor?
> 
> -- CHS
> 
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