[gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. I 
used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the 
morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even 
SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and 
sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from 
my USB stick) any more, I only see a "GRUB" string at the top right, 
then nothing happens.

Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make 
it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'.

Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, 
then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and 
tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find 
much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from 
SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also 
froze while being in the BIOs setup.

What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think 
it has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard 
drives, PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply 
exchange things, the question is what to buy and try. How would you proceed?

The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the 
BIOS there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was 
strange: I updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took ages, 
at least 8 hours. I thought there may b something strange with the build 
process of this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such, but still 
this is very long. But when working with it, I did not notice anything 
strange like sluggish reactions, and videos played fine. But I did not 
use it as much as I normally do, and maybe even when overheated and 
throttled down it would have been fast enough for me to not notice this. 
I watch the syslog normally, but maybe I just did not look closely that 
day, I was busy doing other stuff.

CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these days 
throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's the 
board? It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors.

This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE 
wallet I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories, not 
needed every day, but still important. And the timinig is very bad, I 
just started my new job the day the problem happened, and I do not have 
much time for this now. Before, I was working at home, so I would have 
had all day to diagnose and try things.

It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[meino.cramer]

Hi Alex,

...shot in the dark:
Remove as much as possible of the cards, addons, connections etc
from the PC ... make in as much "bare bone" as possible.

Check All coolers (the little ones also) for dust. Remove all
dust even if it is not completly covered with it.

Dont forget the internals of the power supply. Detach all cables.
Remove the power supply. Go outside ;) and blow the dust inside away.

Put the power supply back into the PC again an attach the cables.

Remove all RAM, carefully clean the contacts, insert as less RAM as
possible.

Remove even the HD if it is possible to get into the BIOS
without any HD attached.

Remove the BIOS battery, wait at least a day and insert it again.

Start the PC and go directly into the BIOS. Check the date/time.
If it shows the current date/time, the battery wasn't removed
long enough. Check the battery voltage. Reinsert the battery.
If your board has a BIOS reset: Reset the BIOS.

Then: In the BIOS enter a page which "does something"
(reports continously temperatures for example).

If this is possible, let the PC run for a 
while that BIOS page and see, whether it
hangs again or not.

If all went fine, add ONE component and try it again.
Add the HD at last to sort out hardware from software bugs...

May be one of the components and not the CPU or motherboard
causes the problem and you will be able to identify it by
this procedure...

HTH!

GOOD LUCK!

Best regard,
mcc

Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> [12-08-17 09:56]:
> Hi there!
> 
> Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. 
> I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the 
> morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even 
> SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and 
> sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from 
> my USB stick) any more, I only see a "GRUB" string at the top right, 
> then nothing happens.
> 
> Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make 
> it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'.
> 
> Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, 
> then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and 
> tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find 
> much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from 
> SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also 
> froze while being in the BIOs setup.
> 
> What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think 
> it has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard 
> drives, PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply 
> exchange things, the question is what to buy and try. How would you 
> proceed?
> 
> The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the 
> BIOS there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was 
> strange: I updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took 
> ages, at least 8 hours. I thought there may b something strange with 
> the build process of this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such, 
> but still this is very long. But when working with it, I did not notice 
> anything strange like sluggish reactions, and videos played fine. But I 
> did not use it as much as I normally do, and maybe even when overheated 
> and throttled down it would have been fast enough for me to not notice 
> this. I watch the syslog normally, but maybe I just did not look 
> closely that day, I was busy doing other stuff.
> 
> CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these days 
> throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's the 
> board? It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors.
> 
> This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE 
> wallet I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories, 
> not needed every day, but still important. And the timinig is very bad, 
> I just started my new job the day the problem happened, and I do not 
> have much time for this now. Before, I was working at home, so I would 
> have had all day to diagnose and try things.
> 
> It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board.
> 
> 	Wonko
> 

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

meino.cramer@gmx.de writes:

> ...shot in the dark:
> Remove as much as possible of the cards, addons, connections etc
> from the PC ... make in as much "bare bone" as possible.

Done already.

> Check All coolers (the little ones also) for dust. Remove all
> dust even if it is not completly covered with it.

They are clean.

> Dont forget the internals of the power supply. Detach all cables.
> Remove the power supply. Go outside ;) and blow the dust inside away.

I did not remove it yet... but if it's a temperature problem, it should 
not happen right after 30 seconds, when Grub already fails.
The voltages reported in the BIOS are okay, but I don't know it this 
information is accurate and reliable.

> Put the power supply back into the PC again an attach the cables.

If I only could find a spare one... I have it, but I don't know where.

> Remove all RAM, carefully clean the contacts, insert as less RAM as
> possible.

Did that, using only 4 of 16 GB, and I switched the modules.

> Remove even the HD if it is possible to get into the BIOS
> without any HD attached.

I also did that, only the CD-ROM is attached.

> Remove the BIOS battery, wait at least a day and insert it again.

That's worth a try. My old PC had a jumper which I could short circuit 
to instantly drain it, not sure if this was normal.

> Start the PC and go directly into the BIOS. Check the date/time.
> If it shows the current date/time, the battery wasn't removed
> long enough. Check the battery voltage. Reinsert the battery.
> If your board has a BIOS reset: Reset the BIOS.
>
> Then: In the BIOS enter a page which "does something"
> (reports continously temperatures for example).
>
> If this is possible, let the PC run for a
> while that BIOS page and see, whether it
> hangs again or not.

Okay, I will do this.

> If all went fine, add ONE component and try it again.
> Add the HD at last to sort out hardware from software bugs...

Nah, I cannot even boot from my USB stick any more. I don't have a boot 
partition on my hard drive, so it is not involved there.

> May be one of the components and not the CPU or motherboard
> causes the problem and you will be able to identify it by
> this procedure...

I hope it's the power supply, this would mean the least effort. I'd 
simply buy a new one, and I would not have to think about what board or 
which CPU I would like to get.

> HTH!
>
> GOOD LUCK!

Thanks! I can need it.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am Freitag, 17. August 2012, 09:50:40 schrieb Alex Schuster:

sounds like a power problem.

Either psu is gone bad (get a new one)
or your mainboard's power circuitry gone bad (if replacement of psu does not 
help, get a new one).

But first thing first: disconnect your hdds! No reason to risk them.
-- 
#163933

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

Volker Armin Hemmann writes:

> sounds like a power problem.
>
> Either psu is gone bad (get a new one)

Well, I got three old ones instead :)

> or your mainboard's power circuitry gone bad (if replacement of psu does not
> help, get a new one).

It did not help :(  Too bad, I probably need a new mainboard. And I 
cannot get one before monday evening, I have to go to a wedding tomorrow 
(not mine) and I doubt I will have time to find a hardware store there.

> But first thing first: disconnect your hdds! No reason to risk them.

I did that soon. I already had trouble with one two weeks ago, it had 
bad blocks on the home partition. The replacement drive also had bad 
blocks, I had to get yet another one. It's a good thing to have recent 
backups :)

And there, it just crashed while in the BIOS setup.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> wrote:
> And there, it just crashed while in the BIOS setup.

If you are using a video card (instead of built-in/on-board video) I
would try a different video card, if you have an old or spare one. I
have had lots of video cards die from overheating and power spikes.

I only had one motherboard ever die, a computer I gave to my father
died after a few months... it was ASRock brand but I'm sure that is a
coincidence. :) It had blown/cracked capacitors all over the
motherboard. It did not die completely at once. It would "kind of"
work, but started to crash randomly and became worse and worse until
finally it wouldn't boot at all. I replaced the MB, but kept the same
CPU, RAM everything else, and it has been working ever since. That was
after we bought a new power supply that didn't make any difference.

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

Paul Hartman writes:

> If you are using a video card (instead of built-in/on-board video) I
> would try a different video card, if you have an old or spare one. I
> have had lots of video cards die from overheating and power spikes.

Sorry, I did not mention that I do not have a video card, it's onboard
video. I do not need great video power, and I wanted to have a quiet PC
that also saves power.

> I only had one motherboard ever die, a computer I gave to my father
> died after a few months... it was ASRock brand but I'm sure that is a
> coincidence. :) It had blown/cracked capacitors all over the
> motherboard. It did not die completely at once. It would "kind of"
> work, but started to crash randomly and became worse and worse until
> finally it wouldn't boot at all. I replaced the MB, but kept the same
> CPU, RAM everything else, and it has been working ever since. That was
> after we bought a new power supply that didn't make any difference.

I'd also say this is unusual. I had a board die, but that was my own
error :)

Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be
okay then.

Thanks for all your responses! I know this is not really related to
Gentoo, but that's what I love this list for, people are very helpful
and competent here.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

I wrote:

> Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be
> okay then.

This took longer than expected. The board I wanted (the same I already 
have) was not available, I had to order it. Strange, there is only one 
that has the features I want - AMD3+ chipset, four memory banks, USB 3, 
and on-board graphics.

So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might 
be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop 
diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was 
the board indeed, not the CPU. Fine, I bought the board, installed it in 
the PC, and guess what - it doesn't work. On the first boot I saw some 
BIOS status messages, hard drives and such, but the keyboard did not 
react, and then it did not boot, I got a black screen only. And on 
subsequent tries, with everything (2 ISDN cards, 4 hard drives) except 
for the DVD drive removed, the screen does not even turn on. All fans 
spin, and the DVD-ROM tray opens when I press the eject button. That's 
all. No keyboard LEDs.

This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing 
the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the 
next board and try again? Argh.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Edward M]

On 08/28/2012 01:57 PM, Alex Schuster wrote:
> So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might 
> be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop 
> diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it 
> was the board indeed, not the CPU. Fine, I bought the board, installed 
> it in the PC, and guess what - it doesn't work. On the first boot I 
> saw some BIOS status messages, hard drives and such, but the keyboard 
> did not react, and then it did not boot, I got a black screen only. 
> And on subsequent tries, with everything (2 ISDN cards, 4 hard drives) 
> except for the DVD drive removed, the screen does not even turn on. 
> All fans spin, and the DVD-ROM tray opens when I press the eject 
> button. That's all. No keyboard LEDs.
>
> This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) 
> killing the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I 
> have the next board and try again? Argh. 

    Hello,

    I would suggest check the psu connector plugs with a multimeter to 
find out if it is working properly?
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/power-supply-test-multimeter.htm

     And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Edward M <martinezedward228@gmail.com> wrote:
>     And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case
> http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case

I completely forget that I had this happen once. The case design was
such that part of the motherboard contacted metal of the case. When I
tried to turn on, it would short and fail to boot up. I had to get a
piece of sticky film and made a layer on the case in the area where it
was touching. After doing that it worked fine.

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Edward M <martinezedward228@gmail.com> wrote:
>>     And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case
>> http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case
>
> I completely forget that I had this happen once. The case design was
> such that part of the motherboard contacted metal of the case. When I
> tried to turn on, it would short and fail to boot up. I had to get a
> piece of sticky film and made a layer on the case in the area where it
> was touching. After doing that it worked fine.

Cases usually ship with standoffs to prevent that kind of thing. The
standoffs look like screws with screwholes in them, and a hexagonal
shaft you can manage with your fingers, a socket wrench or
(non-needlenose) pliers.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Edward M <martinezedward228@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>     And if the motherboard is somehow shorting out inside the case
>>> http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/307187-30-motherboard-shorting-case
>>
>> I completely forget that I had this happen once. The case design was
>> such that part of the motherboard contacted metal of the case. When I
>> tried to turn on, it would short and fail to boot up. I had to get a
>> piece of sticky film and made a layer on the case in the area where it
>> was touching. After doing that it worked fine.
>
> Cases usually ship with standoffs to prevent that kind of thing. The
> standoffs look like screws with screwholes in them, and a hexagonal
> shaft you can manage with your fingers, a socket wrench or
> (non-needlenose) pliers.

In my case (no pun intended) it was shorting even with the standoffs
because of the way a cut-out in the metal under the motherboard had
rolled edges that curled up toward the motherboard. It was a known
defective-by-design situation and later revisions of the case solved
the problem. :) I think it was a Thermaltake case if I remember
correctly.

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am Dienstag, 28. August 2012, 22:57:43 schrieb Alex Schuster:
> I wrote:
> > Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will be
> > okay then.
> 
> This took longer than expected. The board I wanted (the same I already
> have) was not available, I had to order it. Strange, there is only one
> that has the features I want - AMD3+ chipset, four memory banks, USB 3,
> and on-board graphics.
> 
> So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it might
> be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC shop
> diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they confirmed it was
> the board indeed, not the CPU. Fine, I bought the board, installed it in
> the PC, and guess what - it doesn't work. On the first boot I saw some
> BIOS status messages, hard drives and such, but the keyboard did not
> react, and then it did not boot, I got a black screen only. And on
> subsequent tries, with everything (2 ISDN cards, 4 hard drives) except
> for the DVD drive removed, the screen does not even turn on. All fans
> spin, and the DVD-ROM tray opens when I press the eject button. That's
> all. No keyboard LEDs.
> 
> This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing
> the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the
> next board and try again? Argh.


so - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you got a new board AND 
USED THE SAME PSU?

I am just saying - one faulty PSU fried three of my boards. Enermax... will 
never buy again. 

The fans spin, so not all hope is lost. Keyboard, ps/2? usb?

But before you do anything else, change the PSU.

-- 
#163933

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

Volker Armin Hemmann writes:

> Am Dienstag, 28. August 2012, 22:57:43 schrieb Alex Schuster:

>> This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing
>> the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the
>> next board and try again? Argh.
>
> so - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you got a new board AND
> USED THE SAME PSU?

YEAH :) Thinking about this now, yes, it would have made sense to test 
with another PSU first. But it wasn't so obvious to me, I simply thought 
I had bad luck with a bad board, that died. Happens.

> I am just saying - one faulty PSU fried three of my boards. Enermax... will
> never buy again.

So - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you let it fry 
another board, and then... yet another one? Just saying :)

I once had the opposite problem, a mainboard seemed to kill PSUs. That 
was weird.

> The fans spin, so not all hope is lost. Keyboard, ps/2? usb?

It's a PS/2 keyboard.

> But before you do anything else, change the PSU.

I tried another one this morning, same problems. I guess the board is 
fried. So I'll order another one, and this time use another PSU.

Wow, they say it will take 2-3 weeks. So I'll see if there's another 
board that will fulfill my needs... and there is. Radeon 3000 instead of 
4250, and I remember having big trouble with my last Radeon 3250 
system... and no eSATA which I probably wouldn't miss anyway, but it 
also has no PATA at all. I can (and have to) live with this it seems, 
but it's somewhat inconvenient.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote:
> I wrote:
> > Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will
> > be okay then.
> [...]
> So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it
> might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC
> shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they
> confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU.

Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the 
motherboard was faulty, not the CPU?

> Fine, I bought the board

...it having been tested and found faulty!

> guess what - it doesn't work.

Sorry, but I must be misreading this. You've said that the board was 
diagnosed faulty, but you bought it anyway and it turned out faulty. 
Where is the mystery?

Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside-
out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account 
has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:15 PM, Peter Humphrey
<peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote:
>> I wrote:
>> > Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will
>> > be okay then.
>> [...]
>> So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it
>> might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC
>> shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they
>> confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU.
>
> Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the
> motherboard was faulty, not the CPU?
>
>> Fine, I bought the board
>
> ...it having been tested and found faulty!
>
>> guess what - it doesn't work.
>
> Sorry, but I must be misreading this. You've said that the board was
> diagnosed faulty, but you bought it anyway and it turned out faulty.
> Where is the mystery?

The test would have been done on his old board, which the shop
diagnosed to be faulty. Having had that diagnosed, he proceeded to buy
a new board, which also failed.

>
> Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it inside-
> out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet your account
> has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault.

Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit "the board"...but (in
English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding context.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:28:31 -0400
Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it
> > inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet
> > your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault.  
> 
> Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit "the board"...but (in
> English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding context.

<evil thought>
hey, here's an idea, let's fix that by using Hungarian decorators on all
English nouns!

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:28:31 -0400
> Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it
>> > inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet
>> > your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault.
>>
>> Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit "the board"...but (in
>> English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding context.
>
> <evil thought>
> hey, here's an idea, let's fix that by using Hungarian decorators on all
> English nouns!

What, and get Esperanto? (Or Latin. Or Italian. Or Spanish.)


-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:43:29 -0400
Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Alan McKinnon
> <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:28:31 -0400
> > Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> > Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it
> >> > inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet
> >> > your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault.
> >>
> >> Too many uses of the insufficiently-explicit "the board"...but (in
> >> English) such ambiguities are usually resolved by surrounding
> >> context.
> >
> > <evil thought>
> > hey, here's an idea, let's fix that by using Hungarian decorators
> > on all English nouns!
> 
> What, and get Esperanto? (Or Latin. Or Italian. Or Spanish.)
> 
> 

Or Fanagalo.

It exists - go on, google it :-)



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:15:30 +0100
Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote:
> > I wrote:
> > > Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things
> > > will be okay then.
> > [...]
> > So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it
> > might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC
> > shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they
> > confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU.
> 
> Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the 
> motherboard was faulty, not the CPU?
> 
> > Fine, I bought the board
> 
> ...it having been tested and found faulty!
> 
> > guess what - it doesn't work.
> 
> Sorry, but I must be misreading this. You've said that the board was 
> diagnosed faulty, but you bought it anyway and it turned out faulty. 
> Where is the mystery?
> 
> Is this a problem with the English language? I thought I knew it
> inside- out, upside-down and back-to-front. I still think so. Yet
> your account has you tying yourself in knots over a known fault.
> 

No, not at all. He means (just read the whole mail with a view to
understanding the communication, not finding the grammar faults) that
the shop diagnosed the old board was faulty so he bought a new board
which involved a week's wait.

That board now might be faulty too. 
Most obvious cause: Something is breaking the motherboards.
Most obvious root cause: PSU

Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS
test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need.





-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS
> test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need. 

+1  I always start with the P/S.  Well, unless I see something else
unrelated letting the smoke out.  Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause the
smoke to get out of something else too.  It's good advice all the way
around. 

Why not let the computer shop test the P/S?  If it blows up something of
theirs, it's bad.  ;-) 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:04:55 -0500
Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS
> > test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you
> > need. 
> 
> +1  I always start with the P/S.  Well, unless I see something else
> unrelated letting the smoke out.  Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause
> the smoke to get out of something else too.  It's good advice all the
> way around. 
> 
> Why not let the computer shop test the P/S?  If it blows up something
> of theirs, it's bad.  ;-) 



You obviously have a much better opinion of the average repair techie
than I do. The average repair techie would know how to fault find his
way out of a paper bag - the "change bits till it starts working" is
the only technique they know.

That's not to say you don't get good ones - you do - but they are rare.





-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:04:55 -0500
> Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>> Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS
>>> test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you
>>> need. 
>> +1  I always start with the P/S.  Well, unless I see something else
>> unrelated letting the smoke out.  Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause
>> the smoke to get out of something else too.  It's good advice all the
>> way around. 
>>
>> Why not let the computer shop test the P/S?  If it blows up something
>> of theirs, it's bad.  ;-) 
>
>
> You obviously have a much better opinion of the average repair techie
> than I do. The average repair techie would know how to fault find his
> way out of a paper bag - the "change bits till it starts working" is
> the only technique they know.
>
> That's not to say you don't get good ones - you do - but they are rare.
>
>

I worked on a friends rig a couple months ago.  It would reboot at
random.  She runs windows so I tried booting a Linux CD.  It did the
same thing.  Eliminates a bad OS, well, windoze is still bad but
anyway.  lol  I checked for dust bunnies, reseated the memory stick,
only one of them, and it did the same.  So, off to the computer shop I
go.  I got a P/S and a new stick of ram, she only had 512M so it was dog
slow.  The computer place tested both parts on the spot for me.  They
actually plugged the P/S into a mobo and turned it on for a few
minutes.  Anyway, put in the ram which gave her 1.5Gb and in goes the
new P/S.  It has worked ever since. 

The two best tools to diagnose a computer problem is this.  Smoke and
the beep codes.  Most important one is first. I also HATE random
problems.  If you are going to die, just don't cut on at all.  At least
we know where to start.  ^_^

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

Dale writes:

> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS
>> test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need.
>
> +1  I always start with the P/S.  Well, unless I see something else
> unrelated letting the smoke out.  Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause the
> smoke to get out of something else too.  It's good advice all the way
> around.
>
> Why not let the computer shop test the P/S?  If it blows up something of
> theirs, it's bad.  ;-)

I would have preferred to give them the whole PC, but I cannot carry 
that around easily when going to work by bus and tram, so I could drop 
it of the store when I leave work in the evening. It was easier to just 
carry mainboard and CPU in a small bag.

Well, not really true, I gave them the hardware on Friday, and on 
Saturday I could have used the car to transport the PC, but I was 
somewhat busy that day, and just didn't think about the PSU frying the 
board. And I had hoped that they would test the board right when I was 
there on Friday, so I could leave with the new one. Or with the new CPU, 
if that had turned out to be defective.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Peter Humphrey]

On Wednesday 29 August 2012 01:29:00 Alan McKinnon wrote:

> No, not at all. He means (just read the whole mail with a view to
> understanding the communication, not finding the grammar faults)

That's what I did. I read the words he wrote, several times. Grammar 
faults? I noticed none.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

Peter Humphrey writes:

> On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote:
>> I wrote:
>>> Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will
>>> be okay then.
>> [...]
>> So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it
>> might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC
>> shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they
>> confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU.
>
> Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the
> motherboard was faulty, not the CPU?

Yes.

>> Fine, I bought the board
>
> ...it having been tested and found faulty!

Well, obviously not the defective board I already owned, but a new one 
of the same type. Yes. Defects happen, and because one specific board 
suddenly has a problem after working fine for half a year, I do not 
assume that all of these boards will likely fail. And it seems to be the 
only board having the features I want, at least in the price range of 
about 100€. Most have two memory banks only, so I would either have to 
use only 8GB out of 16 GB, or buy new RAM. And I want on-board graphics, 
I do not want to buy an extra graphics adapter that needs power or has a 
noisy fan. There were NVidia boards I think, but I prefer Radeon, that 
finally seems to work just fine, after having lots of trouble in the 
past with both NVidia and an older Radeon system.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[v_2e]

  Hello!

On Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:50:40 +0200
Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> wrote:

> Hi there!
> 
> Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a
> year. I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in
> the morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and
> nothing, even SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of
> times again, and sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot
> even run Grub (from my USB stick) any more, I only see a "GRUB"
> string at the top right, then nothing happens.
> 
> Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can
> make it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'.
> 
> Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, 
> then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each),
> and tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not
> find much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting
> from SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once
> also froze while being in the BIOs setup.
> 
  If the system behaves in such an unpredictable way (freezing at a
random point), I usually check the following things:
- RAM;
- bloated capacitors on the Motherboard;
- bloated or dried capacitors in the power supply unit;

  If your PC is only half a year old, it is unlikely that the
capacitors dried. But they could easily bloat, especially if they were
of bad quality or situated near some hot surface like heat sinks.
  Testing the power supply needs not only visual analysis. It would be
good to attach the oscilloscope to the output and see the voltage
level. It should not have large peaks (voltage jumps). But this is
usually true for the old units with dried capacitors, as I said.

  If I were you, I'd tried to temporarily replace the memory with a 100%
working module, and if it does not help - replace the power  supply
unit (if you do not have the necessary equipment to test it thoroughly).

  And one more simple test: turn on the PC, enter the BIOS setup
utility and keep it running in this state. If it runs ok for some time
(like a couple of hours), I'd say the problem is in RAM.

  Regards,
    Vladimir


----- 
 <v_2e@ukr.net>

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

v_2e@ukr.net writes:

>    If the system behaves in such an unpredictable way (freezing at a
> random point), I usually check the following things:
> - RAM;
> - bloated capacitors on the Motherboard;
> - bloated or dried capacitors in the power supply unit;
>
>    If your PC is only half a year old, it is unlikely that the
> capacitors dried. But they could easily bloat, especially if they were
> of bad quality or situated near some hot surface like heat sinks.
>    Testing the power supply needs not only visual analysis. It would be
> good to attach the oscilloscope to the output and see the voltage
> level. It should not have large peaks (voltage jumps). But this is
> usually true for the old units with dried capacitors, as I said.

The power supply is older, I re-used it from the PC I had before this 
one. I hope it causes the trouble, and will try another one this 
evening. Thanks for this information, this strengthens my confidence 
that I do not have to buy a new board or CPU. Now I am driving home with 
a bag of three PSUs I had lent to a friend (and already forgotten).

>    If I were you, I'd tried to temporarily replace the memory with a 100%
> working module, and if it does not help - replace the power  supply
> unit (if you do not have the necessary equipment to test it thoroughly).

I wish I had :)  The RAM is okay, I think, I cannot imagine different 
memory modules to suddenly go bad all at once. And memtest86 found one 
error only after an hour, while the crashes happen after a few minutes 
already.

>    And one more simple test: turn on the PC, enter the BIOS setup
> utility and keep it running in this state. If it runs ok for some time
> (like a couple of hours), I'd say the problem is in RAM.

It once crashed after ten minutes. That was not reproducable, but I did 
not try that often.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Dale]

Alex Schuster wrote:
> Hi there!
>
> Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year.
> I used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the
> morning. But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing,
> even SysRq, gave a reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again,
> and sometimes it did not even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub
> (from my USB stick) any more, I only see a "GRUB" string at the top
> right, then nothing happens.
>
> Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make
> it freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'.
>
> Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error,
> then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each),
> and tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not
> find much errors, but froze once. Running memtester after booting from
> SystemrescueCD again makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also
> froze while being in the BIOs setup.
>
> What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think
> it has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard
> drives, PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply
> exchange things, the question is what to buy and try. How would you
> proceed?
>
> The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the
> BIOS there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was
> strange: I updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took
> ages, at least 8 hours. I thought there may b something strange with
> the build process of this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such,
> but still this is very long. But when working with it, I did not
> notice anything strange like sluggish reactions, and videos played
> fine. But I did not use it as much as I normally do, and maybe even
> when overheated and throttled down it would have been fast enough for
> me to not notice this. I watch the syslog normally, but maybe I just
> did not look closely that day, I was busy doing other stuff.
>
> CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these
> days throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's
> the board? It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors.
>
> This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE
> wallet I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories,
> not needed every day, but still important. And the timinig is very
> bad, I just started my new job the day the problem happened, and I do
> not have much time for this now. Before, I was working at home, so I
> would have had all day to diagnose and try things.
>
> It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board.
>
>     Wonko
>
>
Just my two cents here.  Problems like this are usually the power
supply.  Could it be the mobo, yes it could but the power supply is more
likely, usually cheaper to replace and easier to.  I had a friends puter
that was acting weird, random reboots and such, it was the power
supply.   A bad power supply can cause all sorts of weird problems. 

If you can, unplug everything including the CD/DVD drive.  No hard
drives either.  Just play with the BIOS.  Basically, don't try to boot
anything, just look at the BIOS itself.  If it acts weird, start with
the power supply.  If you have to, go to a local place and pick up a
cheap power supply.  Put it in just long enough to see if that is the
problem.  If it works, then order you a real good power supply.  Just
keep the cheapy for testing purposes.  If the cheapy power supply
presents the same problem, then it could be the mobo. 

Random problems are hard to fix sometimes.  You just have to swap things
until you find the bad part.  I would put the odds at 80% that it is the
power supply tho.

While at it, do you know what brand and the wattage of your power
supply?  It could be that someone on here as experience with that
particular brand or even that exact model. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Alex Schuster]

Dale spent two cents:

> Just my two cents here.  Problems like this are usually the power
> supply.  Could it be the mobo, yes it could but the power supply is more
> likely, usually cheaper to replace and easier to.  I had a friends puter
> that was acting weird, random reboots and such, it was the power
> supply.   A bad power supply can cause all sorts of weird problems.

Indeed. Well, so can bad capacitors or a hair crack on a motherboard, 
but those are rare I tink.

> If you can, unplug everything including the CD/DVD drive.  No hard
> drives either.  Just play with the BIOS.  Basically, don't try to boot
> anything, just look at the BIOS itself.  If it acts weird, start with
> the power supply.  If you have to, go to a local place and pick up a
> cheap power supply.

I got three from a friend that once were mine, and I know that at least 
one of them is definitely working. But the effect was the same.


> Random problems are hard to fix sometimes.  You just have to swap things
> until you find the bad part.  I would put the odds at 80% that it is the
> power supply tho.

I hoped so, as I do not have board or CPU to swap.

> While at it, do you know what brand and the wattage of your power
> supply?  It could be that someone on here as experience with that
> particular brand or even that exact model.

I could look it up, but then, it's not new, and was one of the few parts 
that survived a major hardware failure half a year ago. Maybe it got 
damaged a little aready then. It seemed to work fine, so I kept using 
it. These things are not cheap, as I tend to buy quality ones that are 
silend and efficient.

I'll get a new board tomorrow, and hope I will have all back working 
soon. I'm very used to my desktop PC. I have a notebook that is way 
faster, but it's new and I don't have all my stuff on it yet. Oh, and it 
runs Windows 7... I'm not sure yet if I will a Gentoo VM, or if I will 
install Gentoo natively and run Windows in the VM. The best would be the 
option to have both, I think I read an article on how this could be 
accomplished. With Gentoo it's not much of a problem, I did that 
already, but Windows will need some tweaking. And I do not have much 
time for this these days.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 12:50 AM, Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> wrote:
> Hi there!
>
> Two days ago, my PC suddenly died, after working fine for half a year. I
> used myrtcwake as usual to suspend to RAM, and it woke up in the morning.
> But after two minutes, the screen went blank and nothing, even SysRq, gave a
> reaction. I tried booting a couple of times again, and sometimes it did not
> even reach KDM. Now, I cannot even run Grub (from my USB stick) any more, I
> only see a "GRUB" string at the top right, then nothing happens.
>
> Booting with SystemRescueCD also freezes sometimes. If not, I can make it
> freeze after seconds by running 'memtester'.
>
> Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error, then I
> aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and tried
> different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find much errors,
> but froze once. Running memtester after booting from SystemrescueCD again
> makes the thing freeze in seconds. It once also froze while being in the
> BIOs setup.
>
> What could be the problem? CPU, board, or even the PSU? I do not think it
> has to do with bad memory. I removed most of the other stuff (hard drives,
> PCI cards). I have no similar hardware so I cannot simply exchange things,
> the question is what to buy and try. How would you proceed?
>
> The fan is still working, the cooler does not become hot, and in the BIOS
> there are not high temperatures begin reported. But one thing was strange: I
> updated Calligra from 2.4 to 2.5 (I think), and it took ages, at least 8
> hours. I thought there may b something strange with the build process of
> this new version, forcing MAKEOPTS=-j1 and such, but still this is very
> long. But when working with it, I did not notice anything strange like
> sluggish reactions, and videos played fine. But I did not use it as much as
> I normally do, and maybe even when overheated and throttled down it would
> have been fast enough for me to not notice this. I watch the syslog
> normally, but maybe I just did not look closely that day, I was busy doing
> other stuff.
>
> CPUs don't just die, do they? Even when overheating, I think these days
> throttle down, so no permanent harm should be done? So maybe it's the board?
> It looks okay, no bent or leaking capacitors.
>
> This is really annoying. Of course most of my passwords are in my KDE wallet
> I cannot access. There's also Wiki, CVS and Git repositories, not needed
> every day, but still important. And the timinig is very bad, I just started
> my new job the day the problem happened, and I do not have much time for
> this now. Before, I was working at home, so I would have had all day to
> diagnose and try things.
>
> It's an AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core CPU, and an ASRock 880GMH/U3S3 board.
>
>         Wonko
>

Hi Alex,
   Sorry for the problems.

   I've read most of the responses so it seems you're getting good
info. A few things:

1) You asked "CPUs don't just die, do they?". The answer is 'yes, they
do.' It can happen at any time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

2) If I understand your post, along with the other discussions, it
seems that you can remove all cards and all memory except 1 DIMM and
boot the machine to BIOS. Is that correct? If so then your CPU isn't
completely dead.

3) As you are seeing some memory problems it might be that memory
died. (see bathtub curve again - it applies to everything.) However it
seems very unlikely that all memory died at the same time. More likely
is the the chipset. If you change DIMMs but keep plugging it into the
same memory channel then it might be that channel in the chipset
that's having trouble. If it's your chipset, you're sunk. Get a new
MB.

   As others have suggested the PSU is a potential common problem.
With everything else out of the box, memory swapped but the same
problem occurring, and the ability to at least get into BIOS, it's
likely either the PSU or the MB.

Good luck,
Mark

[gentoo-user] Re: My PC died. What should I try?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 17/08/12 10:50, Alex Schuster wrote:
> Booting good old memtest86 ran for an hour and only found one error,
> then I aborted, removed three of my four memory modules (4GB each), and
> tried different ones in the first bank. Memtest86 again did not find
> much errors, but froze once.

It finds errors in *all* modules?

Re: [gentoo-user] My PC died. What should I try?

[felix]

Mouse-to-mouse resuscitation?

Unless it's headless.

-- 
            ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._.
     Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@crowfix.com
  GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E  6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933
I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o