On Thu, 2002-03-07 at 16:10, Alex Walker wrote:
> I'm having some spontaneous reboots on a desktop machine I built myself,
> wondering if anyone could shed any light on what they think the cause
> may be.
>
> Here's the spec:
> Chip: Duron 600
> Mobo:
> RAM: 256Meg (9 meg shared with graphics card)
> Case: Maplin 300W case
> HD: IBM Deskstar 30G
> CDROM: CREATIVECD3630E
> CDRW: Mitsumi CR-4802TE
> Floppy: Bog standard one from old computer
>
> Running Debian woody/testing.
>
> Here is what I have diagnosed so far:
> - Reboots are hard and horrible and happen under various kernel versions
> (tried 2.4.16,17,18 2.5.4,5,6-pre1,6-pre3) with and without power
> management support enabled.
> - Reboots occur more frequently under heavy load (was running
> distributed.net, stopping it seems to have reduced reboots, but not
> altogether. On kernel compiles it dies frequently.)
> - It has happened often at 4am, which is odd because cron runs at 6 on
> Debian (I think), but I guess it could be updatedb or something
> triggering it.
> - Sometimes when it reboots, it doesn't boot up again, but all the
> lights on the computer (CDROM, CDRW, HD, Power) flicker madly and
> there's nothing onscreen. Pulling the power cord out the back is the
> only way to stop this. Sometimes plugging it back in instantly allows
> it to boot, sometimes a couple of hours are needed.
> - Removing the CDROM, CDRW and Floppy from the IDE and power seems to
> have no reliability impacts.
> - The Deskstar has been replaced once but this time I ran badblocks on
> it before partitioning and it gave no errors, so I don't think that's
> the problem, and the symptoms of that were very different.
> - From lmsensors I can see that the processor is within acceptable
> limits (<35 degrees), at least under 2.4.x I can see that, lm sensors
> doesn't compile under 2.5.x AFAICS.
>
> I get the impression this is not a software problem, because of:
> a) The way it reboots instantly and doesn't seemed to be linked to
> crashing or anything
> b) The way that sometimes it won't even get to the BIOS.
>
> So I replaced the PSU - but to no avail - same behaviour.
>
> Has anyone had a similar experience with a computer? I guess it must be
> the mobo, RAM or chip that's the problem (or even the PSU still), but
> any idea which?
I would suspect the PSU still - I used to have an athlon 750 which did
the same
What fixed it ws new PSU and a dollop of silicon cream on the cpu -
worth a shot (could be an idea to up the wattage as well)
> The only option I seem to be left with is to transfer everything to
> another case and try and eliminate all the components... unfortunately I
> don't have too many spare computers lying around, but I could bastardise
> my main machine, but I don't particularly want to!
>
> Any help greatly appreciated, if you want any more info, just ask.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alex
>
> --
> ALEX|X3JA
> alex@x3ja.co.uk
> ICQ: 1523424
> MSN: x3ja@hotmail.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk
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