Bruce Miller wrote: > Please forgive the elementary nature of these questions. A recently-widowed > friend has asked me to help troubleshoot her late husband's large and > powerful Windows 7 system. I am myself somewhat preoccupied with other > matters and am sure that I am missing one (or more) obvious solution(s). > > The major constraint is that her late husband was a professional photographer > and he has image files everywhere on his system. Even I can recognize that he > was a truly gifted photographer, but that his computer skills were not to > match. > > There is exactly one USB backup drive and so far I have no idea whether the > backup is complete (I doubt it) or restorable. I am being careful therefore > to limit anything I do to non-destructive testing that does not touch the > hard disks until I have time to do an exhaustive search for all his image > files and ensure that there are *_multiple_* backups of each. Moreover, I > have just learned that he had performed a very expert calibration of his > system to a professional colour printer. I have no idea what or where those > calibration files are. > > Since I almost always use Kubuntu, my primary resource (at the outset) is a > CD of Kubuntu amd64 12.04 LTS. > > The obvious symptom on the Windows 7 machine is a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) > almost every 20 minutes. This is so frequent as to make the machine unusable. > > The first exception code on the BSOD is a memory location of <multiple > zeros>1. Her tech support person (owner of a well-known local computer store > and fellow photographic expert) says that the single digit in the exception > code suggests a hardware failure, probably on the motherboard. > > I have been running Kubuntu from the liveCD for over eighteen hours which > does not support the defective motherboard hypothesis. But my mind has gone > blank on how to stress-test the hardware without writing to any hard disks. > Google has not been a friend; on this problem, I have found it surprisingly > unhelpful. > > So far, I have been running just a browser, a konsole session and glxgears. > The latter will put some load on the CPU and more on the graphics subsystem. > Google did lead me to a sourceforge utility called systester which at least > tests the CPU by attempting to calculate pi to many millions of significant > digits. But I cannot get it to run. > > So my questions are the following: > 1. Does anyone have suggestions on safe non-destructive hardware > stress-testing applications? I have no objection to downloading and burning > to CD a specialized distro. > 2. Is anyone familiar with systester? ( > http://systester.sourceforge.net/about.php ). The sourceforge site provides > precompiled generic binaries for both i686 and amd64, both CLI and qt-based > GUI versions. I have tried copying the binaries to /usr/local/bin/, chowning > the binaries to root: and running as root. But, running off the Kubuntu > LiveCD, I get consistent "permission denied" errors. BTW, the LiveCD drops > straight to a root prompt when one enters "sudo -s" into a terminal session. > There is no password. > > The system is an Intel i7 with 8GB of RAM. It is a 2008-vintage Asus P6T > motherboard; the catch is that it takes an LGA1366 CPU, which is no longer > available. Replacing both the motherboard and CPU will cost north of $500 and > my reluctance to recommend that my friend spend that sort of money is > heightened by the last 18 hours of evidence that the problem is not with the > MB. > > The following is the output of lspci. I have tried running hwinfo, but it > produces hundreds of lines of output. I will post only if someone finds it > potentially useful. > > root@kubuntu:/usr/local/bin# lspci > 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub to ESI Port (rev > 12) > 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root > Port 1 (rev 12) > 00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root > Port 3 (rev 12) > 00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root > Port 7 (rev 12) > 00:10.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Physical and Link Layer > Registers Port 0 (rev 12) > 00:10.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Routing and Protocol Layer > Registers Port 0 (rev 12) > 00:13.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub I/OxAPIC Interrupt > Controller (rev 12) > 00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management > Registers (rev 12) > 00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch Pad > Registers (rev 12) > 00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status and RAS > Registers (rev 12) > 00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers (rev > 12) > 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI > Controller #4 > 00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI > Controller #5 > 00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI > Controller #6 > 00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI > Controller #2 > 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio > Controller > 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root > Port 1 > 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root > Port 3 > 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root > Port 4 > 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root > Port 5 > 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI > Controller #1 > 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI > Controller #2 > 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI > Controller #3 > 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI > Controller #1 > 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90) > 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface > Controller > 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port SATA > IDE Controller #1 > 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller > 00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port SATA > IDE Controller #2 > 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV770 > [Radeon HD 4850] > 02:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV770 HDMI Audio > [Radeon HD 4850/4870] > 03:00.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7231 (rev aa) > 04:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller > (rev 03) > 04:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller > (rev 03) > 05:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6315 Series Firewire > Controller > 06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B > PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) > 08:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)] > IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller (rev 46) > ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QuickPath > Architecture Generic Non-Core Registers (rev 04) > ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QuickPath > Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 04) > ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QPI Link 0 (rev 04) > ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QPI Physical 0 (rev > 04) > ff:03.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller (rev 04) > ff:03.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Target Address Decoder (rev 04) > ff:03.4 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Test Registers (rev 04) > ff:04.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 0 Control Registers (rev 04) > ff:04.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 0 Address Registers (rev 04) > ff:04.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 0 Rank Registers (rev 04) > ff:04.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 0 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04) > ff:05.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 1 Control Registers (rev 04) > ff:05.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 1 Address Registers (rev 04) > ff:05.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 1 Rank Registers (rev 04) > ff:05.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 1 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04) > ff:06.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 2 Control Registers (rev 04) > ff:06.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 2 Address Registers (rev 04) > ff:06.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 2 Rank Registers (rev 04) > ff:06.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory > Controller Channel 2 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04) > root@kubuntu:/usr/local/bin# > > > -- > Bruce Miller > br...@brmiller.ca > Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: (613) 745-1151 > > Thomas Pickering, a well-known former US diplomat, is quoted as having once > said that, "in archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover > the known." And this one-time student of archaeology is relieved to have > finally retired after 36 years in the Canadian foreign service. >
Have you opened the case to see if it was full of dust? It could be that it just gets hot and shuts itself down. I worked on a friends puter a while back and hers did this sort of thing. It was a bad power supply. I might also add, others mentioned running memtest86 and such which is a good idea. If you do that and it runs overnight with no problems, I'd being looking into a POSSIBLE windows problem. Just throwing out some ideas. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! ___________________________________________________ This message is from the kde-linux mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-linux. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
