On Thursday 22 April 2004 11:03, you wrote:
> Vaughn Treude wrote:
> >On Tuesday 30 March 2004 22:27, you wrote:
> >>On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 04:45:31PM -0500, Vaughn Treude wrote:
> >>>Thanks for the help so far.  As soon as I figure out something that
> >>> works I'll definitely share it with the group.
> >>
> >>I wonder if it's a faulty motherboard or CPU or RAM.  Did you try
> >>testing the memory?  memtest86 is pretty good for that.  You might try
> >>letting it run overnight, because sometimes intermittent errors are
> >>tough to smoke out.
> >
> >I finally got time to try your suggestion and run memtest86.  (I _thought_
> >I'd already done that a year ago, but I realized that was on a different
> >box.)  Well, it ran for about an hour and then crashed with an unexpected
> >interrupt.   I searched for that problem on Google, and it seems that's a
> >pretty solid indication of a hardware problem, so I'm going to try
> > swapping out the RAM and see if that fixes it.  It still seems strange,
> > though, that I don't have that problem on Mandrake 8.  Could it be that
> > Mandrake 8 is configured incorrectly, to not see all the memory that's
> > actually there? Someone also mentioned that it could be a heat problem,
> > but that seems highly unlikely to be a distro-dependent condition.
> >
> >Vaughn
>
> I'm glad you posted an update. After running memtest86 I also suspect I
> have bad memory. What happens with me is sometimes My screen sticks I
> sounds like my computer is still working and perhaps it would fix it (I
> suspect the 2.6 kernel would be better at this) but I can never wait
> long enough. Much more common is that my X session gets restarted. and I
> just have to login again. (just about everything I use is backed up /
> able to recover so its mostly just a pita).

Just thought I'd give you guys an update, in the interest of helping other 
unfortunates with similar problems.  I removed the suspected bad memory 
stick, and the system seemed to be much more stable.  It did however hang one 
time since then.  This was different than the usual "flashing caps lock" hang 
I've had most of the time; the system simply stopped functioning without any 
screen output or keyboard functionality.  I suspected that maybe there was 
also an overheat problem, since this motherboard was an update to a large 
tower case that originally housed a 400MHz system.   (My motherboard has a 
"no burn" feature that is supposed to prevent overheating, perhaps that 
kicked in.)   I went to Fry's with the intention of buying one of those 
piezoelectric cooler chips to put on the CPU, but the salesman scared me out 
of it.   He said that many people had problems getting the chip between the 
fan and the CPU, and I'd need a "reasonably flexible" fan, or I might crack 
the CPU.  Having had lots of frustration with CPU fans in the past, I decided 
to try a different approach.  I brought a cheap thermal sensor w/ LCD display 
(about $12 or so) and one of those flat blowers that fits in a PCI slot 
(about $15.)  I checked the temp with and without the extra fan (this is the 
fifth one in the case, counting the power supply and CPU fans) and it 
_seemed_ to lower the temp a C degree or so.  So far so good, no lockups yet. 
  (But watch it happen today since I said that!  :-) )

Vaughn

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