Cheap Linux Hardware - Computer resets several times while booting

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Computer resets several times while booting

Garry Knight

2007-12-10, 7:13 pm

For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at boot
time before eventually booting successfully. After some investigation I'm
still no closer to finding the cause of the problem. Apologies for the
length of this post but I want to make sure I give enough information about
what I have and haven't tried in my attempts to fix it.

I've run memtest overnight with good results. I've also pulled all of the
RAM chips and tried booting with just one 256 MB module at a time and it
still resets. This leads me to believe that it's not the RAM that's at
fault. At least, unless all three modules became faulty at the same time,
which I feel is unlikely. I've also pulled all of the PCI cards and the
problem remains.

The machine was running fine for a few years under various Mandrake/Mandriva
Linux versions and then suddenly started resetting whenever the sound card
was used, though not every time. It would happen when playing MP3s or video
files, but not when playing CDs. The sound card is a SoundBlaster 128 PCI
and there's also an on-board SoundBlaster-compatible module which is
disabled in the BIOS. As I say, I've taken the sound card out and the
rebooting problem remains, with or without the on-board sound enabled.

Then it started rebooting while Mandriva was initialising. And it was doing
so at different times during the initialising process, sometimes rebooting
when (or soon after) udev initialised, sometimes later than this, and
sometimes not until I'd logged in and the KDE desktop had appeared.
Nowadays it first reboots when udev initialises, which led me to believe it
might be a problem with the PCI cards or the drives.

If I leave the machine to keep rebooting it will, after about 6 or 7 reboots
at later stages during the Linux boot process, eventually get to the log-in
prompt, and if I leave it a little while after that I can successfully log
in and everything will be OK until the next time I power up. If the machine
has been on for a couple of hours I can reboot without any problems. It's
almost as if the box needs to "warm up" in order to get all the way through
the boot process. Oh, and the first thing I checked was the processor fan,
which is working fine.

It resets while booting Mandriva 2007 Free, it resets while booting Ubuntu
6.1 (no longer on the machine), it resets while booting from the Mandriva
One 2008 CD and a Knoppix 5.0 CD, and it resets while attempting to boot
the newly-installed Mandriva One 2008.

I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't distro-specific, it isn't
caused by failing RAM chips, and it isn't caused by the sound-card (though
it looked at one time as if it was). It seems to me that there's a
possibility that it's caused by a faulty hard disk, though that seems
unlikely as it reboots at different times during the boot process. I had
wondered whether there might be a problem with IRQ collisions, but the fact
that the problem still occurs after all of the PCI cards have been pulled
makes me doubt this. There might be a problem with the motherboard, but
I've no way of testing that. And since the machine resets at various times
during the boot process, inspecting /var/log/boot.log and /var/log/messages
tells me nothing useful.

In fact, I've just about come to the end of my somewhat limited knowledge of
a) hardware, and b) the Linux boot process, so I need help from you guys.
Or a new PC...

The box is a generic Chinese box with a Pentium 1.2 GHz processor and the
full quota of 768 MB of RAM. It has a Matrox G400 graphics card in the AGP
slot. It has an on-board sound card and soft modem, both disabled. The
primary hard disk is a 40 GB Seagate ST340823A.

I've included below all of the BIOS settings just in case I've managed to
screw up the settings somehow, though the only changes I've made during the
testing process is to select the Failsafe settings, then the Optimized
settings, neither of which made any difference to the rebooting problem.

I'm out of ideas and I'd be grateful for any help on this one. Please let me
know if you need any other information.

BIOS SETTINGS
=============

Standard CMOS Features
----------------------
IDE Primary Master ST340823A
IDE Primary Master Auto
Access Mode Auto
Capacity 40022 MB
Cylinder 19158
Head 16
Precomp 0
Landing Zone 19157
Sector 255
IDE Primary Slave ST340014A
IDE Primary Slave Auto
Access Mode Auto
Capacity 40022 MB
Cylinder 19158
Head 16
Precomp 0
Landing Zone 19157
Sector 255
IDE Secondary Master LITE-ON DVDRW SHW-163]
IDE Secondary Master Auto
Access Mode LBA
Capacity 0 MB
Cylinder 0
Head 0
Precomp 0
Landing Zone 0
Sector 0
IDE Secondary Slave SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-61
IDE Secondary Drive Auto
Access Mode Auto
Capacity 0 MB
Cylinder 0
Head 0
Precomp 0
Landing Zone 0
Sector 0
Drive A 1.44M, 3.5 in.
Drive B None
Video EGA/VGA
Halt On All , But Keyboard
Base Memory 640K
Extended Memory 785408K
Total Memory 786432K

Advanced BIOS Features
----------------------
Virus Warning Disabled
CPU Internal Cache Enabled
External Cache Enabled
CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking Enabled
Quick Power On Self Test Enabled
First Boot Device CDROM
Second Boot Device HDD-0
Third Boot Device Floppy
Boot Other Device Enabled
Swap Floppy Drive Disabled
Boot Up Floppy Seek Enabled
Boot Up NumLock Status On
Gate A20 Option Fast
Typematic Rate Setting Disabled
x Typematic Rate (Chars/Sec) 6
x Typematic Delay (MSec) 250
Security Option Setup
OS Selector For DRAM > 65 MB Non-OS2
Video Bios Shadow Enabled
C8000-CBFFF Shadow Disabled
CC000-CFFFF Shadow Disabled
D0000-D3FFF Shadow Disabled
D4000-D7FFF Shadow Disabled
D8000-DBFFF Shadow Disabled
DC000-DFFFF Shadow Disabled

Advanced Chipset Features
-------------------------
DRAM Clock 100M
SDRAM Cycle Length 3
Bank Interleave Disabled
Memory Hole Disabled
PCI Master Pipeline Req Enabled
P2C/C2P Concurrency Disabled
Fast R-W Turn Around Disabled
System BIOS Cacheable Disabled
Video RAM Cacheable Disabled
Frame Buffer Size 32M
AGP Aperture Size 128M
AGP Mode 4X
AGP Driving Control Auto
x AGP Driving Value DA
OnChip USB Enabled
USB Keyboard Support Enabled
OnChip Sound Disabled
OnChip Modem Disabled
CPU to PCI Write Buffer Enabled
PCI Dynamic Bursting Enabled
PCI Master 0 WS Write Enabled
PCI Delay Transaction Disabled
PCI#2 Access #1 Retry Enabled
AGP Master 1 WS Write Disabled
AGP Master 1 WS Read Disabled

Integrated Peripherals
----------------------
OnChip IDE Channel0 Enabled
OnChip IDE Channel1 Enabled
IDE Prefetch Mode Disabled
Primary Master PIO Auto
Pimary Slave PIO Auto
Secondary Master PIO Auto
Secondary Slave PIO Auto
Pimary Master UDMA Auto
Pimary Slave UDMA Auto
Secondary Master UDMA Auto
Secondary Slave UDMA Auto
Init Display First PCI Slot
IDE HDD Block Mode Disabled
Onboard FDD Controller Enabled
Onboard Serial Port 1 Auto
Onboard Serial Port 2 Auto
UART 2 Mode Standard
x IR Function Duplex Half
x TX,RX inverting enable No, Yes
Onboard Parallel Port 378/IRQ7
Onboard Parallel Mode EPP
x ECP Mode Use DMA 3
Parallel Port EPP Type EPP1.9
Onboard Legacy Audio Enabled
Sound Blaster Disabled
SB I/O Base Address 220H
SB IRQ Select IRQ5
SB DMA Select DMA1
MPU-401 Disabled
MPU-401 I/O Address 330-333H
Game Port (200-207H) Enabled

Power Management Setup
----------------------
ACPI function Enabled
Power Management
Power Management User Define
HDD Power Down Disable
Doze Mode Disable
Suspend Mode Disable
PM Control by APM Yes
Video Off Option Suspend -> Off
Video Off Method V/H SYNC+Blank
MODEM Use IRQ 3
Soft-Off by PWRBTN Instant-Off
State After Power Failure Off
Wake Up Events
VGA Off
LPT & COM LPT/COM
HDD & FD On
PCI Master Off
PowerOn by PCI Card Disabled
Modem Ring Resume Disabled
RTC Alarm Resume Disabled
x Date (of Month) 0
x Resume Time (hh:mm:ss) 0:0:0
Primary INTR On
IRQs Activity Monitoring
IRQ3 (COM 2) Enabled
IRQ4 (COM 1) Enabled
IRQ5 (LPT 2) Enabled
IRQ6 (Floppy Disk) Enabled
IRQ7 (LPT 1) Enabled
IRQ8 (RTC Alarm) Disabled
IRQ9 (IRQ2 Redir) Disabled
IRQ10 (Reserved) Disabled
IRQ11 (Reserved) Disabled
IRQ12 (PS/2 Mouse) Enabled
IRQ13 (Coprocessor) Enabled
IRQ14 (Hard Disk) Enabled
IRQ15 (Reserved) Disabled

PnP/PCI Configurations
----------------------
PNP OS Installed No
Reset Configuation Data Disabled
Resources Controlled By Auto(ESCD)
x IRQ Resources
x DMA Resources
PCI/VGA Palette Snoop Disabled
Assign IRQ For VGA Enabled
Assign IRQ For USB Enabled

PC Health Status
----------------
Current CPUFAN1 Speed 4818 RPM
Current CPUFAN2 Speed 0 RPM
Vcore 1.82 V
3.3V 3.27 V
5V 4.73 V
12V 12.78 V

Frequency/Voltage Control
-------------------------
Auto Detect DIMM/PCI CLk Enabled
CPU Host Clock (CPU/PCI) Default

--
Garry Knight
garryknight@gmx.net

Grant

2007-12-10, 7:13 pm

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:30:51 +0000, Garry Knight <garryknight@gmx.net> wrote:

>For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at boot
>time before eventually booting successfully.

Sounds like bad capacitors on the mobo, check for bulging or leaking
capacitors around the CPU area.

--Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/

Geoffrey Clements

2007-12-10, 7:13 pm

Garry Knight wrote:

> For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at
> boot time before eventually booting successfully. After some investigation
> I'm still no closer to finding the cause of the problem. Apologies for the
> length of this post but I want to make sure I give enough information
> about what I have and haven't tried in my attempts to fix it.
>

[snip long post]

It's difficult to say what the problem might be but ...

1. It doesn't sound like this is the problem but it's always worth checking
the temperature of the processor and motherboard. This is usually done
using one of the bios pages.

2. If any of the internal connectors are the type _without_ retaining clips
then they can sometimes work loose (probably by heat cycling) so go around
the connectors and re-seat them.

3. Do you have a power supply from another computer which you can use as a
substitute for the one in the faulty machine? If so, swap it out and see if
that makes a difference.

--
Geoff Registered Linux user 196308
Replace bitbucket with geoff to mail me.

Simon J. Rowe

2007-12-10, 7:13 pm

You probably have a faulty PSU and/or motherboard. Take a good look at the
capacitors on the motherboard. Look for tops that are bulging or seeping
from the bottom. Borrow a PSU and see if the system is more stable.

Dave Liquorice

2007-12-10, 7:13 pm

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:30:51 +0000, Garry Knight wrote:

> For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at
> boot time before eventually booting successfully.

You say the machine is a few years old and that once it has had power for
a while it is OK and is OK without power for a short time.

CMOS battery on it's last legs?

--
Cheers new5pam@howhill.com
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

david

2007-12-11, 7:20 am

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:16:47 +0000, Dave Liquorice rearranged some
electrons to say:

> On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:30:51 +0000, Garry Knight wrote:
>
>
> You say the machine is a few years old and that once it has had power
> for a while it is OK and is OK without power for a short time.
>
> CMOS battery on it's last legs?

That probably wouldn't cause it to reboot (once power is on, the battery
has no effect).

Mark Hobley

2007-12-11, 7:20 am

In comp.os.linux.hardware Garry Knight <garryknight@gmx.net> wrote:
> For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at boot
> time before eventually booting successfully.

As others have said, it is most likely to be a Power Supply Unit problem.

Is it rebooting during the Power On Self Test, or further along the line?

> The machine was running fine for a few years under various Mandrake/Mandriva
> Linux versions and then suddenly started resetting whenever the sound card
> was used, though not every time.

Do you know what type of motherboard you have? There is a bug I have found with
Asrock K7S8XE motherboards, which can cause the computer to crash when the
sound card is used.

(A BIOS upgrade fixes this)

> The box is a generic Chinese box

Ok, check if its an Asrock motherboard.

> Standard CMOS Features
> ----------------------
> IDE Primary Master ST340823A

For the purposes of testing you could remove these:

> IDE Primary Slave ST340014A
> IDE Secondary Master LITE-ON DVDRW SHW-163]
> IDE Secondary Slave SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-61

Maybe put the CDROM on the primary interface and disable the secondary one.
Again, I have seen problems with Asrock motherboards using the secondary
interface, causing some wierd error messages during boot-up. (I'm not sure
what other brands may be affected)

(The BIOS upgrade did not fix this, and I ended up putting the IDE devices in
a specific order as a workaround)

> Drive A 1.44M, 3.5 in.

Set to "None" if you are not using this.

Use the CMOS reset jumper on the board, remove the internal battery, power the
machine up and down, as needed, and reset the BIOS. (You could put a new
battery in at this point).

> Virus Warning Disabled
> CPU Internal Cache Enabled
> External Cache Enabled

If things are still looking bleak, you could disable External Cache, but I
doubt that is the problem.

> Quick Power On Self Test Enabled

Disable this for a more intensive Power On Self Test

> Boot Up Floppy Seek Enabled

This hammers the heads in the Floppy Disk Drive during bootup. Disable this.

> PCI Dynamic Bursting Enabled

You could toggle this, for the purpose of testing. (But I doubt that is the
problem)

> OnChip IDE Channel1 Enabled

Disable this for the purpose of testing (You will need to move your CDROM
drive onto the primary interface)

> Pimary Master UDMA Auto

If you wanted to eliminate a drive problem, you could disable UDMA, but I
doubt that is causing your problem.

> Onboard FDD Controller Enabled

Disable this for testing purposes

> Onboard Serial Port 1 Auto
> Onboard Serial Port 2 Auto

Disable these for testing purposes

> Onboard Legacy Audio Enabled

Disable this

> Game Port (200-207H) Enabled

Disable this for testing purposes

> ACPI function Enabled

Some early boards had problems with ACPI. Try the drive swapping stuff first.
If it still crashes, you could try Disabling this.

> PM Control by APM Yes
> Video Off Option Suspend -> Off
> Video Off Method V/H SYNC+Blank

Ok, good.

> Wake Up Events
> LPT & COM LPT/COM

Switch Off

> HDD & FD On
> PCI Master Off

Ok.

> IRQs Activity Monitoring

Disable these:

> IRQ3 (COM 2) Enabled
> IRQ4 (COM 1) Enabled
> IRQ5 (LPT 2) Enabled
> IRQ6 (Floppy Disk) Enabled
> IRQ7 (LPT 1) Enabled

> PNP OS Installed No

Ok, good.

> Reset Configuation Data Disabled

You could do a reset, if the other stuff does not work.

> Resources Controlled By Auto(ESCD)

If you are really really desparate, then you could do this manually, but I
would try the other stuff first.

> Assign IRQ For VGA Enabled

This legacy interupt is no longer required. You can disable this.

> Assign IRQ For USB Enabled

I don't know whether you need this for a USB keyboard or mouse. (You need to
Google here.) Disable it if you can.

> PC Health Status

Ok, it looks healthy to me.

Let us know how you get on. I reckon its the Power Supply by the way, so try
that first and foremost.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

Martin Gregorie

2007-12-11, 1:16 pm

Nigel Wade

2007-12-11, 1:16 pm

Garry Knight wrote:

> For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at boot
> time before eventually booting successfully. After some investigation I'm
> still no closer to finding the cause of the problem. Apologies for the
> length of this post but I want to make sure I give enough information about
> what I have and haven't tried in my attempts to fix it.
>
> I've run memtest overnight with good results. I've also pulled all of the
> RAM chips and tried booting with just one 256 MB module at a time and it
> still resets. This leads me to believe that it's not the RAM that's at
> fault. At least, unless all three modules became faulty at the same time,
> which I feel is unlikely. I've also pulled all of the PCI cards and the
> problem remains.
>
> The machine was running fine for a few years under various Mandrake/Mandriva
> Linux versions and then suddenly started resetting whenever the sound card
> was used, though not every time. It would happen when playing MP3s or video
> files, but not when playing CDs. The sound card is a SoundBlaster 128 PCI
> and there's also an on-board SoundBlaster-compatible module which is
> disabled in the BIOS. As I say, I've taken the sound card out and the
> rebooting problem remains, with or without the on-board sound enabled.
>
> Then it started rebooting while Mandriva was initialising. And it was doing
> so at different times during the initialising process, sometimes rebooting
> when (or soon after) udev initialised, sometimes later than this, and
> sometimes not until I'd logged in and the KDE desktop had appeared.
> Nowadays it first reboots when udev initialises, which led me to believe it
> might be a problem with the PCI cards or the drives.
>
> If I leave the machine to keep rebooting it will, after about 6 or 7 reboots
> at later stages during the Linux boot process, eventually get to the log-in
> prompt, and if I leave it a little while after that I can successfully log
> in and everything will be OK until the next time I power up. If the machine
> has been on for a couple of hours I can reboot without any problems. It's
> almost as if the box needs to "warm up" in order to get all the way through
> the boot process. Oh, and the first thing I checked was the processor fan,
> which is working fine.
>
> It resets while booting Mandriva 2007 Free, it resets while booting Ubuntu
> 6.1 (no longer on the machine), it resets while booting from the Mandriva
> One 2008 CD and a Knoppix 5.0 CD, and it resets while attempting to boot
> the newly-installed Mandriva One 2008.
>
> I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't distro-specific, it isn't
> caused by failing RAM chips, and it isn't caused by the sound-card (though
> it looked at one time as if it was). It seems to me that there's a
> possibility that it's caused by a faulty hard disk, though that seems
> unlikely as it reboots at different times during the boot process. I had
> wondered whether there might be a problem with IRQ collisions, but the fact
> that the problem still occurs after all of the PCI cards have been pulled
> makes me doubt this. There might be a problem with the motherboard, but
> I've no way of testing that. And since the machine resets at various times
> during the boot process, inspecting /var/log/boot.log and /var/log/messages
> tells me nothing useful.
>
> In fact, I've just about come to the end of my somewhat limited knowledge of
> a) hardware, and b) the Linux boot process, so I need help from you guys.
> Or a new PC...
>
> The box is a generic Chinese box with a Pentium 1.2 GHz processor and the
> full quota of 768 MB of RAM. It has a Matrox G400 graphics card in the AGP
> slot. It has an on-board sound card and soft modem, both disabled. The
> primary hard disk is a 40 GB Seagate ST340823A.
>
> I've included below all of the BIOS settings just in case I've managed to
> screw up the settings somehow, though the only changes I've made during the
> testing process is to select the Failsafe settings, then the Optimized
> settings, neither of which made any difference to the rebooting problem.
>
> I'm out of ideas and I'd be grateful for any help on this one. Please let me
> know if you need any other information.
>
>

I'd suspect the PSU. The power drain on a PSU is generally greatest when its
booting, spinning up the HDs, etc. This may be just enough to drop either the
5V or 12V rail to the point the system reboots.

Chances are if the box is a "generic Chinese" one that the PSU is the cheapest
they could lay their hands on. The PSU is one of items on which most box
shifters cut corners. A stable PSU is essential to stable system, and a failed
PSU can potentially fry everything inside the case.

--
Nigel Wade

Owain

2007-12-11, 1:16 pm

Garry Knight wrote:
> For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at boot
> time before eventually booting successfully.

I have some not dissimilar problems, which I think are down to a faulty
DVD drive causing problems on the IDE interface, even though the hard
drive and the opticals are on separate IDE cables/channels.

Owain

Jonathan Campbell

2007-12-11, 1:16 pm

Garry Knight

2007-12-11, 7:15 pm

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I hadn't considered that there might
be a problem with capacitors on the motherboard, but now that I think about
it, I can see how they could cause this problem. And I noticed when I had
the machine open that the casing of the PSU is loose. I'll have a closer
look at it. Since I don't much care for getting fried, how long would I
have to leave the machine powered down before it's safe to peek inside the
PSU casing?

Geoffrey: There's nowhere in the BIOS to check temperatures, but there might
be something under /proc with this information. I don't have access to
another PSU; if I can't detect a problem with the one that's in there, I
might have to bite the bullet and fork out for a new one anyway.

Owain: I haven't checked the drives yet. It's on my list of things to do
when I next have time to address the problem. Thanks for the suggestion.

Mark Hobley wrote:
> As others have said, it is most likely to be a Power Supply Unit problem.
> Is it rebooting during the Power On Self Test, or further along the line?

It sails through the POST every time. It's well into the Linux init process
where it resets, usually just after udev initialises, which was why I
thought it might be to do with conflicting devices. I don't recall which
motherboard it is, but I have the documentation for it stashed away
somewhere. It's definitely not an Asrock, though; I don't recall ever
seeing that name before. Thanks for all the suggestions for changes to BIOS
settings. I've never taken the time to tweak things as the machine has been
reliable for so long. I've saved your post and I'll work through it.

I'll check the capacitors, but I'm beginning to think it probably is the
PSU. Thanks once again to all for your help.

--
Garry Knight
garryknight@gmx.net

Jordan Hazen

2007-12-12, 7:20 am

In article <36frl39httd45imffdpe0sf8gp2ml4br28@4ax.com>,
Grant <bugsplatter@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:30:51 +0000, Garry Knight <garryknight@gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>Sounds like bad capacitors on the mobo, check for bulging or leaking
>capacitors around the CPU area.

Yes, you should definitely check for failed electrolytic capacitors on
the motherboard, first thing. These are a very common problem lately.

In two years' time, I've come across at least 10 systems with
capacitor trouble (including one that was showing exactly the same
problem reported), but only one with a bad power supply.

See http://www.badcaps.net/ for more information, including some
photos of what to look for.
--
Jordan.

Garry Knight

2007-12-12, 1:17 pm

Jordan Hazen wrote:

> Yes, you should definitely check for failed electrolytic capacitors on
> the motherboard, first thing.
....
> See http://www.badcaps.net/ for more information, including some
> photos of what to look for.

Thanks for this link. I've had a look and while none of mine seem to be
leaking from the bottom, at least one of them suffers from the bulge you
can see in the third picture down on http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5

I've uploaded pictures of the one I think is faulty. If you look at
http://i7.tinypic.com/6u978ds.jpg and http://i7.tinypic.com/6slcn89.jpg,
it's the one at the far right of both pictures.

Just to complicate things, while trying to boot today, rather than
resetting, the machine hung. And what was on screen (as below) was
confusing as I'd already thought that irq allocation might have caused the
problem. The problem is that I know a little about hardware but just not
enough...

Booting paravirtualized kernel on bare hardware
NET: Registered protocol family 16
ACPI: bus type pci registered
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb450, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
Setting up standard PCI resources
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: (supports S0 S1 S5)
ACPI: Using PIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
PCI quirk: region 6000-607f claimed by vt82c686 HW-mon
PCI quirk: retion 5000-500f claimed by vt82c686 SMB
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *10 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 *5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 *12 14 15)
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
pnp: PnP ACPI init
ACPI: bus type pnp registered
pnp: PnP ACPI: found 12 devices
ACPI: ACPI bus type pnp unregistered
PnPBIOS: Disabled
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci-routeirq". If it helps, post a
report

--
Garry Knight
garryknight@gmx.net

AZ Nomad

2007-12-12, 1:17 pm

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:48:02 +0000, Garry Knight <garryknight@gmx.net> wrote:
>Jordan Hazen wrote:

>...
[vbcol=seagreen]
>Thanks for this link. I've had a look and while none of mine seem to be
>leaking from the bottom, at least one of them suffers from the bulge you
>can see in the third picture down on http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5

>I've uploaded pictures of the one I think is faulty. If you look at
>http://i7.tinypic.com/6u978ds.jpg and http://i7.tinypic.com/6slcn89.jpg,
>it's the one at the far right of both pictures.

Yup. you definately have bad caps.

It's time to replace the motherboard.
You should also get either a case with a filter on the air intake, or put
the system on a cleaning schedule. Your cpu heatsink and fan are filthy and
the heatsink might have blocked air passages.

Garry Knight

2007-12-12, 1:17 pm

AZ Nomad wrote:

> It's time to replace the motherboard.

That's what I was afraid of. Oh, well, it's only money...

> You should also get either a case with a filter on the air intake, or put
> the system on a cleaning schedule. Your cpu heatsink and fan are filthy
> and the heatsink might have blocked air passages.

Thanks for the advice.

--
Garry Knight
garryknight@gmx.net

2007-12-13, 7:15 pm

On 10 Dec, 21:30, Garry Knight <garrykni...@gmx.net> wrote:
> For some time now my machine has been resetting itself several times at boot
> time before eventually booting successfully. After some investigation I'm
> still no closer to finding the cause of the problem. Apologies for the
> length of this post but I want to make sure I give enough information about
> what I have and haven't tried in my attempts to fix it.
>
<snip way too much info>

Your PSU is underrated or knackered. (units will deteriorate over
time, cheaper ones faster).

C.

AHappyCamper

2007-12-14, 1:17 pm

C. wrote:
> On 10 Dec, 21:30, Garry Knight <garrykni...@gmx.net> wrote:
> <snip way too much info>
>
> Your PSU is underrated or knackered. (units will deteriorate over
> time, cheaper ones faster).
>
> C.

Until you get a new PSU, you could possibly run with minimal drives
connected!

But, running with a marginal PSU can result in component failures,
including the CPU, due to the rapid fluctuations delivered to them.

I keep several computers about the property, so that I avoid being in
withdrawal if one drops dead.

Had 8 of them succumb to the Capacitor Plague, but, was able to keep
coming to the Internet on the other 22 systems... Many are saved from
the dumpster, or were actually in it, when rescued.

Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Fedora, Suse, or Vixta were applied! Now, they are
most wonderful machines! Extras are a 'good thing'!