On Wednesday 11 July 2007 00:29, Iain Buchanan wrote: > On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 00:40 +0000, James wrote: > > Not sure this is useful, but, if you can get the system to boot, you > > and look more closely at the memory specifics with the 'lshw' command. > > hey, neat command. The system boots knoppix and windows fine, but I > don't have gentoo on it (yet :) and I don't have lshw on any live cd I > have... It can take PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 though. I currently have > 2x 512Mb PC3200 in it.
Use apt-get install to install the lshw package on Knoppix. It has a small footprint and it should hopefully not exhaust your RAM. > > If you can, swap the memory with another know good system for a few > > days.... Something might show up as a problem > > I did that. The new RAM (another PC3200) works ok, but memtest still > fails at the same point (test 3). This is confusing me. the same > live-cd runs memtest on my other machine (DDR2) without fail... > > The other funny thing about memtest is this: The info it displays about > the system is a bit strange. Sometimes it shows a CPU clock of 2999MHz, > sometimes 3000MHz; sometimes the RAM shows DDR398, sometimes DDR400. > It's always the same for one particular run of memtest, but sometimes > changes between boots. Hmm, is there a BIOS firmware upgrade you could perhaps flash it with? Can you swap around the RAM modules or remove them one at a time until you find the culprit? (not sure if you tried that already). > > > (Ultimately, I'm trying to diagnose a random reboot problem, which > > > makes me suspicious of the memory, but I'm not sure) > > > > I always look at the temperature as the mobo makes it available, > > or checking the temperature of the hard drive with 'hddtemp /dev/<drive>' > > I plotted some GPU and CPU temperatures while running some games, and > they all go to a reasonable maximum and stop there. I even turned the > case fans off, and they don't go higher. > > The "random reboot" problem is now a "won't boot" problem! I put the > original RAM back in the same slots, and now the HD's, CD's, and fans > spin up, but no display appears. I hear a bios beep, and that's it. > Maybe it's a MBoard issue? Maybe a video card issue? Hmmm, I don't > want to replace the whole lot! POST error. Could be due to dodgy memory. Have you tried removing the CMOS battery and then reflashing the BIOS with the latest firmware? -- Regards, Mick
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