[ubuntu-uk] Hardware failure?

[Adam Bagnall]

Seif Attar wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 22:31 +0100, Philip Wyett wrote:
>   
>> On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 22:13 +0100, Seif Attar wrote:
>>     
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I have had problems with ubuntu freezing on gutsy and it's still
>>> freezing with hardy, thought it was x64 problem, so i switched to x32
>>> ubuntu, but it's still crashing! then i realised it might not be ubuntu
>>> at all. so I ran a memtest, that froze as well, I assume that if the
>>> memtest froze then it's not a memory problem? otherwise it would have
>>> detected the problem?
>>>
>>> what else can I do to find the culprit? I tried removing all the pci
>>> cards, it still crashed, I am trying the option noapictimer for the grub
>>> menu, as a thread I found suggested, will see how that turns out. Next I
>>> am going to remove one of the ram and leave one, swapping later, that
>>> way i'll know for sure if 1 of them is broken. 
>>> any other suggestions on how to troubleshoot this? maybe benchmarking
>>> software for ubuntu?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Seif A.
>>>
>>>       
>> Hi,
>>
>> It could be a memory issue still but lets not go down that road at
>> present.
>>
>> Have you been inside the machine to make sure all hardware is correctly
>> inserted and seated?
>>
>> The next thing is to check if a specific app is normally running when
>> the machine freezes or give us as best description of what happens i.e.
>> After a long time running, can you dump back to failsafe terminal out of
>> X, is the mouse still working after freeze etc. Be descriptive! :-)
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Phil
>>     
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I bought the system in october, so quite cheap from ebay, it's one of
> those home built machines, so think cheapest parts possible! :) 
>
> it's a core2quad with 2 gigs of ram, nvidia 8800gt. The symptoms have
> changed since it first started. before it used to freeze, no mouse
> moving, no keyboard, sysrq doesnt work, but display showing last app
> running on X, and nothing in the logs,then I noticed that if I have some
> apps open when the crash happens (e.g. mythtv) i do get something in the
> logs, see attached file with different data from different days, logs
> dont always get written to, these messages keep repeating in the logs.
>
> I don't know if any1 can make anything of those things. but the freezes
> are completely random! they happen while i am working on the machine, or
> if i come back after leaving it for a few hours, no matter what apps are
> running. seriously frustrating.
>
> I had checked the temperatures at some point, dont remember what it was,
> but after googling i found it's normal for a stock fan (somewhere in the
> 50s), no dust on the fans, all hardware well attached.
> getting a new video card tomorrow, as the fan on the one i have is quite
> noisy, and that throws one of the suspects away!
>
> any helps would be appreciated.
>
> thanks,
> Seif A.
>
>   
I'd say it's probably the power supply. If, as you say, it's built from 
the cheapest possible parts then it's very likely that they've used a 
no-name "high wattage" power supply which are known for causing 
problems. A quad core processor and 8800gt gfx card aren't going to be 
low power either. Even if the new graphics card is lower power and the 
problem goes away I'd still replace the power supply as cheapo ones 
aren't known for their reliability and have been known to damage other 
components when they fail.

Adam.