very sorry to ask this almost completely off-topic thing here. but this forum comprises of the only techies i know, and we have almost exhausted our local resources. a next-door friend of mine bought an assembled pc (p-iii 866mhz, 256 megs@133 mhz, 815-EEA2 mboard with integrated sound and graphics, 20 gigs seagate etc.) six months ago. this machine has very recently developed the habit of shutting itself down at random intervals, and the only queue (and even that only occasional) we have been able even to remotely associate with these incidents is the insertion/access of a cdrom in the cd drive. after the shutdown occurs, it's no use pressing the power switch. nothing happens. the main power supply must be switched off and then on again before the thing can be started anew. naturally, we thought it had something to do with the 235-watt smps (power supply). we changed it, but that solved nothing. then we thought of changing the IDE cables. but still the problem remained. now we've used up almost all kinds of local expertise (mostly quack), and my friend can't afford to call in the really-really professionals, like, people from compaq or wherever. and in the meantime the smalltime crook (as the fellow later really turned out to be) who sold the thing to my friend, winded up his business and vanished (and is now on the calcutta police's 'wanted' list). so folks, do you guys have any idea at all what this thing might be? it's switching on and off so fast that he's seriously thinking of renting it out to the local disco, for use as a strobe light :-) the machine's running Windows Me. of course, that's the immediate solution that comes to one's head - "what's unexpected with microsoft products crashing hardware?" i hear you ask. but in this case the computer doesn't need any help from the os. it's managing to die quite efficiently on its own. in fact, the shutdown occured once even when the disk was feshly formatted and there was no os on it and i inserted a cdrom just for testing purposes.
- tathagata _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ linux-india-help mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-help
