Kernel panic while running X - how to diagnose?

[Chris G]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 10:39:26PM +0000, Chris G wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 05:21:40PM +0000, Chris G wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 10:47:58AM -0500, Rashkae wrote:
> > > Boot from CD and run Memcheck for 4 hours.
> > > 
> > > Follow that up with a run of badblocks against all your Hard drives
> > > 
> > > If no hardware fault is found, try replacing your video card for a
> > > couple months, (A low end Nvidia would do nicely and is available for
> > > relatively small investment) (I just noticed that your MOBO has on-board
> > > video, if you get to this step, please run memtest again with a video
> > > card in place so the memory normally reserved for Video is also tested.)
> > > 
> > > After all that, if the computer is still not reliable and no fault can
> > > be found, consider gifting it to a 'relative.'
> > > 
> > :-)  I was wondering about memtest, I'll give it a good long run tonight.
> > 
> It looks like it may be a memory problem, memtest gives errors on test
> 5, block copy.  I think it may be a marginal compatibility problem
> between my memory and the motherboard as the individual DIMMs all test
> OK with memtest.
> 
> I have looked at the Asus web site and it seems that a BIOS update
> *may* fix the problem so I'm trying that (and will give it another
> good blast of memtest).
> 
Well, touch wood, the BIOS update does seem to have fixed the memory
problem.  Two complete passes through test 5 have been error free
whereas previously I got a lot of errors on every pass.  I did try
moving the memory around (before the BIOS update) and I was still
getting errors so it's not just because I've reseated the memory.

Now to see whether fixing the memory errors also fixed those kernel
panics. 

-- 
Chris Green