Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Peter Humphrey writes: On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote: I wrote: Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be okay then. [...] So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU. Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the motherboard was faulty, not the CPU? Yes. Fine, I bought the board ...it having been tested and found faulty! Well, obviously not the defective board I already owned, but a new one of the same type. Yes. Defects happen, and because one specific board suddenly has a problem after working fine for half a year, I do not assume that all of these boards will likely fail. And it seems to be the only board having the features I want, at least in the price range of about 100€. Most have two memory banks only, so I would either have to use only 8GB out of 16 GB, or buy new RAM. And I want on-board graphics, I do not want to buy an extra graphics adapter that needs power or has a noisy fan. There were NVidia boards I think, but I prefer Radeon, that finally seems to work just fine, after having lots of trouble in the past with both NVidia and an older Radeon system. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Dale writes: Alan McKinnon wrote: Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need. +1 I always start with the P/S. Well, unless I see something else unrelated letting the smoke out. Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause the smoke to get out of something else too. It's good advice all the way around. Why not let the computer shop test the P/S? If it blows up something of theirs, it's bad. ;-) I would have preferred to give them the whole PC, but I cannot carry that around easily when going to work by bus and tram, so I could drop it of the store when I leave work in the evening. It was easier to just carry mainboard and CPU in a small bag. Well, not really true, I gave them the hardware on Friday, and on Saturday I could have used the car to transport the PC, but I was somewhat busy that day, and just didn't think about the PSU frying the board. And I had hoped that they would test the board right when I was there on Friday, so I could leave with the new one. Or with the new CPU, if that had turned out to be defective. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Volker Armin Hemmann writes: Am Dienstag, 28. August 2012, 22:57:43 schrieb Alex Schuster: This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the next board and try again? Argh. so - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you got a new board AND USED THE SAME PSU? YEAH :) Thinking about this now, yes, it would have made sense to test with another PSU first. But it wasn't so obvious to me, I simply thought I had bad luck with a bad board, that died. Happens. I am just saying - one faulty PSU fried three of my boards. Enermax... will never buy again. So - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you let it fry another board, and then... yet another one? Just saying :) I once had the opposite problem, a mainboard seemed to kill PSUs. That was weird. The fans spin, so not all hope is lost. Keyboard, ps/2? usb? It's a PS/2 keyboard. But before you do anything else, change the PSU. I tried another one this morning, same problems. I guess the board is fried. So I'll order another one, and this time use another PSU. Wow, they say it will take 2-3 weeks. So I'll see if there's another board that will fulfill my needs... and there is. Radeon 3000 instead of 4250, and I remember having big trouble with my last Radeon 3250 system... and no eSATA which I probably wouldn't miss anyway, but it also has no PATA at all. I can (and have to) live with this it seems, but it's somewhat inconvenient. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
I wrote: Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be okay then. This took longer than expected. The board I wanted (the same I already have) was not available, I had to order it. Strange, there is only one that has the features I want - AMD3+ chipset, four memory banks, USB 3, and on-board graphics. So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU. Fine, I bought the board, installed it in the PC, and guess what - it doesn't work. On the first boot I saw some BIOS status messages, hard drives and such, but the keyboard did not react, and then it did not boot, I got a black screen only. And on subsequent tries, with everything (2 ISDN cards, 4 hard drives) except for the DVD drive removed, the screen does not even turn on. All fans spin, and the DVD-ROM tray opens when I press the eject button. That's all. No keyboard LEDs. This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the next board and try again? Argh. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Am Dienstag, 28. August 2012, 22:57:43 schrieb Alex Schuster: I wrote: Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be okay then. This took longer than expected. The board I wanted (the same I already have) was not available, I had to order it. Strange, there is only one that has the features I want - AMD3+ chipset, four memory banks, USB 3, and on-board graphics. So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU. Fine, I bought the board, installed it in the PC, and guess what - it doesn't work. On the first boot I saw some BIOS status messages, hard drives and such, but the keyboard did not react, and then it did not boot, I got a black screen only. And on subsequent tries, with everything (2 ISDN cards, 4 hard drives) except for the DVD drive removed, the screen does not even turn on. All fans spin, and the DVD-ROM tray opens when I press the eject button. That's all. No keyboard LEDs. This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the next board and try again? Argh. so - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you got a new board AND USED THE SAME PSU? I am just saying - one faulty PSU fried three of my boards. Enermax... will never buy again. The fans spin, so not all hope is lost. Keyboard, ps/2? usb? But before you do anything else, change the PSU. -- #163933
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On 08/28/2012 01:57 PM, Alex Schuster wrote: So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU. Fine, I bought the board, installed it in the PC, and guess what - it doesn't work. On the first boot I saw some BIOS status messages, hard drives and such, but the keyboard did not react, and then it did not boot, I got a black screen only. And on subsequent tries, with everything (2 ISDN cards, 4 hard drives) except for the DVD drive removed, the screen does not even turn on. All fans spin, and the DVD-ROM tray opens when I press the eject button. That's all. No keyboard LEDs. This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the next board and try again? Argh. Hello, I would suggest check the psu connector plugs with a multimeter to find out if it is working properly? http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/power-supply-test-multimeter.htm And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Edward M martinezedward...@gmail.com wrote: And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case I completely forget that I had this happen once. The case design was such that part of the motherboard contacted metal of the case. When I tried to turn on, it would short and fail to boot up. I had to get a piece of sticky film and made a layer on the case in the area where it was touching. After doing that it worked fine.
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Edward M martinezedward...@gmail.com wrote: And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case I completely forget that I had this happen once. The case design was such that part of the motherboard contacted metal of the case. When I tried to turn on, it would short and fail to boot up. I had to get a piece of sticky film and made a layer on the case in the area where it was touching. After doing that it worked fine. Cases usually ship with standoffs to prevent that kind of thing. The standoffs look like screws with screwholes in them, and a hexagonal shaft you can manage with your fingers, a socket wrench or (non-needlenose) pliers. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Edward M martinezedward...@gmail.com wrote: And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case I completely forget that I had this happen once. The case design was such that part of the motherboard contacted metal of the case. When I tried to turn on, it would short and fail to boot up. I had to get a piece of sticky film and made a layer on the case in the area where it was touching. After doing that it worked fine. Cases usually ship with standoffs to prevent that kind of thing. The standoffs look like screws with screwholes in them, and a hexagonal shaft you can manage with your fingers, a socket wrench or (non-needlenose) pliers. In my case (no pun intended) it was shorting even with the standoffs because of the way a cut-out in the metal under the motherboard had rolled edges that curled up toward the motherboard. It was a known defective-by-design situation and later revisions of the case solved the problem. :) I think it was a Thermaltake case if I remember correctly.
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote: I wrote: Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be okay then. [...] So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU. Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the motherboard was faulty, not the CPU? Fine, I bought the board ...it having been tested and found faulty! guess what - it doesn't work. Sorry, but I must be misreading this. You've said that the board was diagnosed faulty, but you bought it anyway and it turned out faulty. Where is the mystery? Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:15 PM, Peter Humphrey pe...@humphrey.ukfsn.org wrote: On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote: I wrote: Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be okay then. [...] So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU. Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the motherboard was faulty, not the CPU? Fine, I bought the board ...it having been tested and found faulty! guess what - it doesn't work. Sorry, but I must be misreading this. You've said that the board was diagnosed faulty, but you bought it anyway and it turned out faulty. Where is the mystery? The test would have been done on his old board, which the shop diagnosed to be faulty. Having had that diagnosed, he proceeded to buy a new board, which also failed. Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault. Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit the board...but (in English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding context. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:15:30 +0100 Peter Humphrey pe...@humphrey.ukfsn.org wrote: On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote: I wrote: Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be okay then. [...] So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU. Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the motherboard was faulty, not the CPU? Fine, I bought the board ...it having been tested and found faulty! guess what - it doesn't work. Sorry, but I must be misreading this. You've said that the board was diagnosed faulty, but you bought it anyway and it turned out faulty. Where is the mystery? Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault. No, not at all. He means (just read the whole mail with a view to understanding the communication, not finding the grammar faults) that the shop diagnosed the old board was faulty so he bought a new board which involved a week's wait. That board now might be faulty too. Most obvious cause: Something is breaking the motherboards. Most obvious root cause: PSU Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:28:31 -0400 Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault. Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit the board...but (in English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding context. evil thought hey, here's an idea, let's fix that by using Hungarian decorators on all English nouns! -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:28:31 -0400 Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault. Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit the board...but (in English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding context. evil thought hey, here's an idea, let's fix that by using Hungarian decorators on all English nouns! What, and get Esperanto? (Or Latin. Or Italian. Or Spanish.) -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Alan McKinnon wrote: Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need. +1 I always start with the P/S. Well, unless I see something else unrelated letting the smoke out. Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause the smoke to get out of something else too. It's good advice all the way around. Why not let the computer shop test the P/S? If it blows up something of theirs, it's bad. ;-) Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Wednesday 29 August 2012 01:29:00 Alan McKinnon wrote: No, not at all. He means (just read the whole mail with a view to understanding the communication, not finding the grammar faults) That's what I did. I read the words he wrote, several times. Grammar faults? I noticed none. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:04:55 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need. +1 I always start with the P/S. Well, unless I see something else unrelated letting the smoke out. Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause the smoke to get out of something else too. It's good advice all the way around. Why not let the computer shop test the P/S? If it blows up something of theirs, it's bad. ;-) You obviously have a much better opinion of the average repair techie than I do. The average repair techie would know how to fault find his way out of a paper bag - the change bits till it starts working is the only technique they know. That's not to say you don't get good ones - you do - but they are rare. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:43:29 -0400 Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:28:31 -0400 Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault. Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit the board...but (in English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding context. evil thought hey, here's an idea, let's fix that by using Hungarian decorators on all English nouns! What, and get Esperanto? (Or Latin. Or Italian. Or Spanish.) Or Fanagalo. It exists - go on, google it :-) -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Alan McKinnon wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:04:55 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need. +1 I always start with the P/S. Well, unless I see something else unrelated letting the smoke out. Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause the smoke to get out of something else too. It's good advice all the way around. Why not let the computer shop test the P/S? If it blows up something of theirs, it's bad. ;-) You obviously have a much better opinion of the average repair techie than I do. The average repair techie would know how to fault find his way out of a paper bag - the change bits till it starts working is the only technique they know. That's not to say you don't get good ones - you do - but they are rare. I worked on a friends rig a couple months ago. It would reboot at random. She runs windows so I tried booting a Linux CD. It did the same thing. Eliminates a bad OS, well, windoze is still bad but anyway. lol I checked for dust bunnies, reseated the memory stick, only one of them, and it did the same. So, off to the computer shop I go. I got a P/S and a new stick of ram, she only had 512M so it was dog slow. The computer place tested both parts on the spot for me. They actually plugged the P/S into a mobo and turned it on for a few minutes. Anyway, put in the ram which gave her 1.5Gb and in goes the new P/S. It has worked ever since. The two best tools to diagnose a computer problem is this. Smoke and the beep codes. Most important one is first. I also HATE random problems. If you are going to die, just don't cut on at all. At least we know where to start. ^_^ Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Dale spent two cents: Just my two cents here. Problems like this are usually the power supply. Could it be the mobo, yes it could but the power supply is more likely, usually cheaper to replace and easier to. I had a friends puter that was acting weird, random reboots and such, it was the power supply. A bad power supply can cause all sorts of weird problems. Indeed. Well, so can bad capacitors or a hair crack on a motherboard, but those are rare I tink. If you can, unplug everything including the CD/DVD drive. No hard drives either. Just play with the BIOS. Basically, don't try to boot anything, just look at the BIOS itself. If it acts weird, start with the power supply. If you have to, go to a local place and pick up a cheap power supply. I got three from a friend that once were mine, and I know that at least one of them is definitely working. But the effect was the same. Random problems are hard to fix sometimes. You just have to swap things until you find the bad part. I would put the odds at 80% that it is the power supply tho. I hoped so, as I do not have board or CPU to swap. While at it, do you know what brand and the wattage of your power supply? It could be that someone on here as experience with that particular brand or even that exact model. I could look it up, but then, it's not new, and was one of the few parts that survived a major hardware failure half a year ago. Maybe it got damaged a little aready then. It seemed to work fine, so I kept using it. These things are not cheap, as I tend to buy quality ones that are silend and efficient. I'll get a new board tomorrow, and hope I will have all back working soon. I'm very used to my desktop PC. I have a notebook that is way faster, but it's new and I don't have all my stuff on it yet. Oh, and it runs Windows 7... I'm not sure yet if I will a Gentoo VM, or if I will install Gentoo natively and run Windows in the VM. The best would be the option to have both, I think I read an article on how this could be accomplished. With Gentoo it's not much of a problem, I did that already, but Windows will need some tweaking. And I do not have much time for this these days. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Hi Alex, ...shot in the dark: Remove as much as possible of the cards, addons, connections etc from the PC ... make in as much bare bone as possible. Check All coolers (the little ones also) for dust. Remove all dust even if it is not completly covered with it. Dont forget the internals of the power supply. Detach all cables. Remove the power supply. Go outside ;) and blow the dust inside away. Put the power supply back into the PC again an attach the cables. Remove all RAM, carefully clean the contacts, insert as less RAM as possible. Remove even the HD if it is possible to get into the BIOS without any HD attached. Remove the BIOS battery, wait at least a day and insert it again. Start the PC and go directly into the BIOS. Check the date/time. If it shows the current date/time, the battery wasn't removed long enough. Check the battery voltage. Reinsert the battery. If your board has a BIOS reset: Reset the BIOS. Then: In the BIOS enter a page which does something (reports continously temperatures for example). If this is possible, let the PC run for a while that BIOS page and see, whether it hangs again or not. If all went fine, add ONE component and try it again. Add the HD at last to sort out hardware from software bugs... May be one of the components and not the CPU or motherboard causes the problem and you will be able to identify it by this procedure... HTH! GOOD LUCK! Best regard, mcc Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org [12-08-17 09:56]: Hi there! Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from my USB stick) any more, I only see a GRUB string at the top right, then nothing happens. Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'. Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also froze while being in the BIOs setup. What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think it has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard drives, PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply exchange things, the question is what to buy and try. How would you proceed? The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the BIOS there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was strange: I updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took ages, at least 8 hours. I thought there may b something strange with the build process of this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such, but still this is very long. But when working with it, I did not notice anything strange like sluggish reactions, and videos played fine. But I did not use it as much as I normally do, and maybe even when overheated and throttled down it would have been fast enough for me to not notice this. I watch the syslog normally, but maybe I just did not look closely that day, I was busy doing other stuff. CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these days throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's the board? It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors. This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE wallet I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories, not needed every day, but still important. And the timinig is very bad, I just started my new job the day the problem happened, and I do not have much time for this now. Before, I was working at home, so I would have had all day to diagnose and try things. It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?q
Aaa aAaa aaa a Am 17.08.2012 10:31 schrieb meino.cra...@gmx.de: Hi Alex, ...shot in the dark: Remove as much as possible of the cards,aadwqqqaaa www wpa www a weißes www aa Array www www www a aaa aa aadwqqqaaa aaa w aadwqqqaaa www aa aaa a aaa www Awaa aaa aa quattro Aquarellw aaa aa aa Webauftritt aaa a aaa aA aaa aAaAaAaq aaawa addons, connections etcwo from the PC ... make ian as much bare bone aaa stwww wwwaaa www qaaa wwwas a. www www waslittle ones also) for dust. Removeaa wwwaa all dust even if it is not completly covered with ait. Dona www ot forget the internals of the power supply. Detach all cables. Remove the power supply. Go outside ;) and blow the dust inside away. Put the power supply back into the PC again an attach the cables. Remove all RAM, carefully clean the contacts, insert as less RAM as possible. Remove even the HD if it is possible to get into the BIOS without any HD attached. Remove the BIOS battery, wait at least a day and insert it again. Start the PC and go directly into the BIOS. Check the date/time. If it shows the current date/time, the battery wasn't removed long enough. Check the battery voltage. Reinsert the battery. If your board has a BIOS reset: Reset the BIOS. Then: In the BIOS enter a page which does something (reports continously temperatures for example). If this is possible, let the PC run for a while that BIOS page and see, whether it hangs again or not. If all went fine, add ONE component and try it again. Add the HD at last to sort out hardware from software bugs... May be one of the components and not the CPU or motherboard causes the problem and you will be able to identify it by this procedure... HTH! GOOD LUCK! Best regard, mcc Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org [12-08-17 09:56]: Hi there! Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from my USB stick) any more, I only see a GRUB string at the top right, then nothing happens. Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'. Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also froze while being in the BIOs setup. What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think it has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard drives, PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply exchange things, the question is what to buy and try. How would you proceed? The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the BIOS there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was strange: I updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took ages, at least 8 hours. I thought there may b something strange with the build process of this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such, but still this is very long. But when working with it, I did not notice anything strange like sluggish reactions, and videos played fine. But I did not use it as much as I normally do, and maybe even when overheated and throttled down it would have been fast enough for me to not notice this. I watch the syslog normally, but maybe I just did not look closely that day, I was busy doing other stuff. CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these days throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's the board? It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors. This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE wallet I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories, not needed every day, but still important. And the timinig is very bad, I just started my new job the day the problem happened, and I do not have much time for this now. Before, I was working at home, so I would have had all day to diagnose and try things. It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board. Wonko Am 17.08.2012 10:31 schrieb meino.cra...@gmx.de: Hi Alex, ...shot in the dark: Remove as much as possible of the cards, addons, connections etc from the PC ... make in as much bare bone as possible. Check All coolers (the little ones also) for dust. Remove all dust even if it is not completly covered with it. Dont forget the internals of the power supply. Detach
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Am Freitag, 17. August 2012, 09:50:40 schrieb Alex Schuster: sounds like a power problem. Either psu is gone bad (get a new one) or your mainboard's power circuitry gone bad (if replacement of psu does not help, get a new one). But first thing first: disconnect your hdds! No reason to risk them. -- #163933
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Hello! On Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:50:40 +0200 Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org wrote: Hi there! Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from my USB stick) any more, I only see a GRUB string at the top right, then nothing happens. Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'. Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also froze while being in the BIOs setup. If the system behaves in such an unpredictable way (freezing at a random point), I usually check the following things: - RAM; - bloated capacitors on the Motherboard; - bloated or dried capacitors in the power supply unit; If your PC is only half a year old, it is unlikely that the capacitors dried. But they could easily bloat, especially if they were of bad quality or situated near some hot surface like heat sinks. Testing the power supply needs not only visual analysis. It would be good to attach the oscilloscope to the output and see the voltage level. It should not have large peaks (voltage jumps). But this is usually true for the old units with dried capacitors, as I said. If I were you, I'd tried to temporarily replace the memory with a 100% working module, and if it does not help - replace the power supply unit (if you do not have the necessary equipment to test it thoroughly). And one more simple test: turn on the PC, enter the BIOS setup utility and keep it running in this state. If it runs ok for some time (like a couple of hours), I'd say the problem is in RAM. Regards, Vladimir - v...@ukr.net
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
meino.cra...@gmx.de writes: ...shot in the dark: Remove as much as possible of the cards, addons, connections etc from the PC ... make in as much bare bone as possible. Done already. Check All coolers (the little ones also) for dust. Remove all dust even if it is not completly covered with it. They are clean. Dont forget the internals of the power supply. Detach all cables. Remove the power supply. Go outside ;) and blow the dust inside away. I did not remove it yet... but if it's a temperature problem, it should not happen right after 30 seconds, when Grub already fails. The voltages reported in the BIOS are okay, but I don't know it this information is accurate and reliable. Put the power supply back into the PC again an attach the cables. If I only could find a spare one... I have it, but I don't know where. Remove all RAM, carefully clean the contacts, insert as less RAM as possible. Did that, using only 4 of 16 GB, and I switched the modules. Remove even the HD if it is possible to get into the BIOS without any HD attached. I also did that, only the CD-ROM is attached. Remove the BIOS battery, wait at least a day and insert it again. That's worth a try. My old PC had a jumper which I could short circuit to instantly drain it, not sure if this was normal. Start the PC and go directly into the BIOS. Check the date/time. If it shows the current date/time, the battery wasn't removed long enough. Check the battery voltage. Reinsert the battery. If your board has a BIOS reset: Reset the BIOS. Then: In the BIOS enter a page which does something (reports continously temperatures for example). If this is possible, let the PC run for a while that BIOS page and see, whether it hangs again or not. Okay, I will do this. If all went fine, add ONE component and try it again. Add the HD at last to sort out hardware from software bugs... Nah, I cannot even boot from my USB stick any more. I don't have a boot partition on my hard drive, so it is not involved there. May be one of the components and not the CPU or motherboard causes the problem and you will be able to identify it by this procedure... I hope it's the power supply, this would mean the least effort. I'd simply buy a new one, and I would not have to think about what board or which CPU I would like to get. HTH! GOOD LUCK! Thanks! I can need it. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?q
Randolph Maaßen writes: Aaa aAaa aaa a Am 17.08.2012 10:31 schrieb meino.cra...@gmx.de mailto:meino.cra...@gmx.de: Hi Alex, ...shot in the dark: Remove as much as possible of the cards,aadwqqqaaa www wpa www a weißes www aa Array www www www a aaa aa aadwqqqaaa aaa w aadwqqqaaa www aa aaa a aaa www Awaa aaa aa quattro Aquarellw aaa aa aa Webauftritt aaa a aaa aA aaa aAaAaAaq aaawa addons, connections etcwo from the PC ... make ian as much bare bone aaa stwww wwwaaa www qaaa wwwas a. www www waslittle ones also) for dust. Removeaa wwwaa all dust even if it is not completly covered with ait. Woow! What is going on here? Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?q
2012/8/17 Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org Randolph Maaßen writes: Aaa aAaa aaa a Am 17.08.2012 10:31 schrieb meino.cra...@gmx.de mailto:meino.cra...@gmx.de: Hi Alex, ...shot in the dark: Remove as much as possible of the cards,aadwqqqaaa www wpa www a weißes www aa Array www www www a aaa aa aadwqqqaaa aaa w aadwqqqaaa www aa aaa a aaa www Awaa aaa aa quattro Aquarellw aaa aa aa Webauftritt aaa a aaa aA aaa aAaAaAaq aaawa addons, connections etcwo from the PC ... make ian as much bare bone aaa stwww wwwaaa www qaaa wwwas a. www www waslittle ones also) for dust. Removeaa wwwaa all dust even if it is not completly covered with ait. Woow! What is going on here? Wonko Damn!! Sorry for this bad post, somehow my phone unlocked in my pocket. -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards Randolph Maaßen
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Alex Schuster wrote: Hi there! Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from my USB stick) any more, I only see a GRUB string at the top right, then nothing happens. Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'. Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also froze while being in the BIOs setup. What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think it has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard drives, PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply exchange things, the question is what to buy and try. How would you proceed? The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the BIOS there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was strange: I updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took ages, at least 8 hours. I thought there may b something strange with the build process of this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such, but still this is very long. But when working with it, I did not notice anything strange like sluggish reactions, and videos played fine. But I did not use it as much as I normally do, and maybe even when overheated and throttled down it would have been fast enough for me to not notice this. I watch the syslog normally, but maybe I just did not look closely that day, I was busy doing other stuff. CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these days throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's the board? It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors. This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE wallet I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories, not needed every day, but still important. And the timinig is very bad, I just started my new job the day the problem happened, and I do not have much time for this now. Before, I was working at home, so I would have had all day to diagnose and try things. It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board. Wonko Just my two cents here. Problems like this are usually the power supply. Could it be the mobo, yes it could but the power supply is more likely, usually cheaper to replace and easier to. I had a friends puter that was acting weird, random reboots and such, it was the power supply. A bad power supply can cause all sorts of weird problems. If you can, unplug everything including the CD/DVD drive. No hard drives either. Just play with the BIOS. Basically, don't try to boot anything, just look at the BIOS itself. If it acts weird, start with the power supply. If you have to, go to a local place and pick up a cheap power supply. Put it in just long enough to see if that is the problem. If it works, then order you a real good power supply. Just keep the cheapy for testing purposes. If the cheapy power supply presents the same problem, then it could be the mobo. Random problems are hard to fix sometimes. You just have to swap things until you find the bad part. I would put the odds at 80% that it is the power supply tho. While at it, do you know what brand and the wattage of your power supply? It could be that someone on here as experience with that particular brand or even that exact model. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?q
Randolph Maaßen wrote: 2012/8/17 Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org mailto:wo...@wonkology.org Randolph Maaßen writes: Aaa aAaa aaa a Am 17.08.2012 10:31 schrieb meino.cra...@gmx.de mailto:meino.cra...@gmx.de mailto:meino.cra...@gmx.de mailto:meino.cra...@gmx.de: Hi Alex, ...shot in the dark: Remove as much as possible of the cards,aadwqqqaaa www wpa www a weißes www aa Array www www www a aaa aa aadwqqqaaa aaa w aadwqqqaaa www aa aaa a aaa www Awaa aaa aa quattro Aquarellw aaa aa aa Webauftritt aaa a aaa aA aaa aAaAaAaq aaawa addons, connections etcwo from the PC ... make ian as much bare bone aaa stwww wwwaaa www qaaa wwwas a. www www waslittle ones also) for dust. Removeaa wwwaa all dust even if it is not completly covered with ait. Woow! What is going on here? Wonko Damn!! Sorry for this bad post, somehow my phone unlocked in my pocket. -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards Randolph Maaßen Is your butt sending emails? I thought they had a different way of communicating. LOL Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?q
Randolph Maaßen wrote: Sorry for this bad post, somehow my phone unlocked in my pocket. I assumed your cat walking over the keyboard ;) -Matt
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?q
Randolph Maaßen writes: 2012/8/17 Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org mailto:wo...@wonkology.org Woow! What is going on here? Damn!! Sorry for this bad post, somehow my phone unlocked in my pocket. I'm happy for every reply, and this was a very special one :) -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards Randolph Maaßen The signature seems to be separated correctly by -- instead of --, yet my Thunderbird does not recognize it as such. Maybe it has a problem with quoted-printable format? Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
v...@ukr.net writes: If the system behaves in such an unpredictable way (freezing at a random point), I usually check the following things: - RAM; - bloated capacitors on the Motherboard; - bloated or dried capacitors in the power supply unit; If your PC is only half a year old, it is unlikely that the capacitors dried. But they could easily bloat, especially if they were of bad quality or situated near some hot surface like heat sinks. Testing the power supply needs not only visual analysis. It would be good to attach the oscilloscope to the output and see the voltage level. It should not have large peaks (voltage jumps). But this is usually true for the old units with dried capacitors, as I said. The power supply is older, I re-used it from the PC I had before this one. I hope it causes the trouble, and will try another one this evening. Thanks for this information, this strengthens my confidence that I do not have to buy a new board or CPU. Now I am driving home with a bag of three PSUs I had lent to a friend (and already forgotten). If I were you, I'd tried to temporarily replace the memory with a 100% working module, and if it does not help - replace the power supply unit (if you do not have the necessary equipment to test it thoroughly). I wish I had :) The RAM is okay, I think, I cannot imagine different memory modules to suddenly go bad all at once. And memtest86 found one error only after an hour, while the crashes happen after a few minutes already. And one more simple test: turn on the PC, enter the BIOS setup utility and keep it running in this state. If it runs ok for some time (like a couple of hours), I'd say the problem is in RAM. It once crashed after ten minutes. That was not reproducable, but I did not try that often. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 12:50 AM, Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org wrote: Hi there! Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from my USB stick) any more, I only see a GRUB string at the top right, then nothing happens. Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'. Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also froze while being in the BIOs setup. What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think it has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard drives, PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply exchange things, the question is what to buy and try. How would you proceed? The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the BIOS there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was strange: I updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took ages, at least 8 hours. I thought there may b something strange with the build process of this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such, but still this is very long. But when working with it, I did not notice anything strange like sluggish reactions, and videos played fine. But I did not use it as much as I normally do, and maybe even when overheated and throttled down it would have been fast enough for me to not notice this. I watch the syslog normally, but maybe I just did not look closely that day, I was busy doing other stuff. CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these days throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's the board? It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors. This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE wallet I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories, not needed every day, but still important. And the timinig is very bad, I just started my new job the day the problem happened, and I do not have much time for this now. Before, I was working at home, so I would have had all day to diagnose and try things. It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board. Wonko Hi Alex, Sorry for the problems. I've read most of the responses so it seems you're getting good info. A few things: 1) You asked CPUs don't just die, do they?. The answer is 'yes, they do.' It can happen at any time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve 2) If I understand your post, along with the other discussions, it seems that you can remove all cards and all memory except 1 DIMM and boot the machine to BIOS. Is that correct? If so then your CPU isn't completely dead. 3) As you are seeing some memory problems it might be that memory died. (see bathtub curve again - it applies to everything.) However it seems very unlikely that all memory died at the same time. More likely is the the chipset. If you change DIMMs but keep plugging it into the same memory channel then it might be that channel in the chipset that's having trouble. If it's your chipset, you're sunk. Get a new MB. As others have suggested the PSU is a potential common problem. With everything else out of the box, memory swapped but the same problem occurring, and the ability to at least get into BIOS, it's likely either the PSU or the MB. Good luck, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Volker Armin Hemmann writes: sounds like a power problem. Either psu is gone bad (get a new one) Well, I got three old ones instead :) or your mainboard's power circuitry gone bad (if replacement of psu does not help, get a new one). It did not help :( Too bad, I probably need a new mainboard. And I cannot get one before monday evening, I have to go to a wedding tomorrow (not mine) and I doubt I will have time to find a hardware store there. But first thing first: disconnect your hdds! No reason to risk them. I did that soon. I already had trouble with one two weeks ago, it had bad blocks on the home partition. The replacement drive also had bad blocks, I had to get yet another one. It's a good thing to have recent backups :) And there, it just crashed while in the BIOS setup. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Alex Schuster wo...@wonkology.org wrote: And there, it just crashed while in the BIOS setup. If you are using a video card (instead of built-in/on-board video) I would try a different video card, if you have an old or spare one. I have had lots of video cards die from overheating and power spikes. I only had one motherboard ever die, a computer I gave to my father died after a few months... it was ASRock brand but I'm sure that is a coincidence. :) It had blown/cracked capacitors all over the motherboard. It did not die completely at once. It would kind of work, but started to crash randomly and became worse and worse until finally it wouldn't boot at all. I replaced the MB, but kept the same CPU, RAM everything else, and it has been working ever since. That was after we bought a new power supply that didn't make any difference.
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Paul Hartman writes: If you are using a video card (instead of built-in/on-board video) I would try a different video card, if you have an old or spare one. I have had lots of video cards die from overheating and power spikes. Sorry, I did not mention that I do not have a video card, it's onboard video. I do not need great video power, and I wanted to have a quiet PC that also saves power. I only had one motherboard ever die, a computer I gave to my father died after a few months... it was ASRock brand but I'm sure that is a coincidence. :) It had blown/cracked capacitors all over the motherboard. It did not die completely at once. It would kind of work, but started to crash randomly and became worse and worse until finally it wouldn't boot at all. I replaced the MB, but kept the same CPU, RAM everything else, and it has been working ever since. That was after we bought a new power supply that didn't make any difference. I'd also say this is unusual. I had a board die, but that was my own error :) Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be okay then. Thanks for all your responses! I know this is not really related to Gentoo, but that's what I love this list for, people are very helpful and competent here. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?
Mouse-to-mouse resuscitation? Unless it's headless. -- ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._. Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman rocket surgeon / fe...@crowfix.com GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E 6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933 I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o
