[ubuntu-uk] Hardware failure?

[Ian Pascoe]

Hi Seif

Before going down the new PSU route, do you have any power conditioners on
the mains supply to your box?

If not, that would certainly be the next purchase I'd recommend, followed by
the PSU afterwards.

To my inexperienced eyes, if a full power off and break with mains is
required to reset things, it certainly does point towards the PSU, but it
could still be spikes coming in over the mains and causing the PSU to
wobble.  In which case, even with a new PSU you'd still be liable to
wobbles, but maybe not as dramatic as you get currently.

Cheers

Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com]On Behalf Of Rob Beard
Sent: 01 October 2008 11:53
To: British Ubuntu Talk
Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] Hardware failure?


Seif Attar wrote:
> me again, it crashed, so it's not the graphics card, and the noapic
> didn't fix it, the last crash happened while I was installing stuff with
> synaptic, nothing in the logs.
>
> After the crash I pressed the reset button, and then it froze while the
> grub menu was showing, restarted, it froze after I selected an entry
> from the grub and the text "Starting Up" was showing and nothing
> happened, in the past I had to completely turn off the pc and unplug it
> from electricity in order to have it boot normally again  (this weird
> freeze on reboot after crash doesn't always happen, could be that I only
> notice it when I am working on the machine when the crash occurs, maybe
> when it happens while I am away, whatever overheated has cooled down, or
> whatever capacitor had gone fubar had released it's electricity? cpu
> temp was 55c after the crash), so yesterday I removed the first RAM,
> tried to boot it, it froze again, then I removed the second ram and it
> booted normally, so I am now testing it with only 1 piece of ram, if it
> still crashes, I'll try the PSU, but my friend keeps forgetting to bring
> it! maybe tomorrow. Another thing I noticed yesterday, is that after I
> force the computer to shutdown (holding the power button), the num lock
> indicator on my keyboard is still on, even though the computer is
> shutdown. Checked the bios setting to make sure I haven't enabled
> key-press power on, and it's not enabled.
>
> Sorry for posting so much about this, I realise this is not Ubuntu
> related any more (probably and hopefully), but I have no where to go,
> and I imagine that if I take it to a hardware specialist that he will
> want an OS that he is more comfortable with.
>
>
> Peace,
> Seif A.
>

I really do feel for you.  It's one of those annoying problems
especially when you don't have compatible hardware kicking around.  I've
had two Socket 754 motherboards die on me through power surges whereas
the CPU survived.  Usually it's been a case of buying a new motherboard
and hoping that it works as no one I knew had a compatible board and
CPU.  Sods law one of the companies I do contract IT support for now has
a stack of machines with Socket 754 boards and now I'm on a Socket 775
Pentium Dual Core and Socket AM2 Phenom (again, no compatible boards
although touch wood things are working okay).

Just a thought, have you tried getting in touch with the person/company
you got the machine from?

If you ask me, if you bought it new you should have a warranty on the
machine even if it was built by a small system builder.

Rob


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