I can't offer any solutions but I have some more questions... On 2009-Nov-11 09:37:47 -0800, David Wolfskill <[email protected]> wrote: >Every once in a while, it just crashes -- hard. It loses video output >at that point; Ctl+Alt+Esc doesn't appear to change anything; entering >(say) "reset" blindly at that point has no apparent effect.
Roughly how often? Has anything unusual happened lately? Brownout, blackout, power surge, lightning, heatwave, ... >accordingly, had attached a SCSI host adaptor via PCI riser card. Since >I had nothing actually connected to the card, I pulled it out of the >machine before bringing it back up. Did you also pull the riser card? Riser cards don't have a spectacularly high reputation. > (I also fleft around for >excessively warm spots; nothing. All fans spin up, as well.) I don't suppose you also studied the capacitors on the motherboard. Are any showing any signs of bulges? Have you tried reseating everything? >Flaky CPU? Flaky power supply? How might I tell? CPU shouldn't go flaky unless it's been overheated. In my experience, PSUs are the least reliable part of consumer-grade hardware but about the only way to check is to swap it. If you've got a DMM, you could check all the rails but there are lots of failure modes that won't show up that way. Have you checked the voltage/temperature screen in the BIOS? Does anything look abnormal? Are you using a PS/2 or USB keyboard? Are you running X? At this stage, my suggestion would be to try swapping the PSU. -- Peter Jeremy
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