[ale] OT: hardware lockups, resets

[Ben Coleman]

On Mon, 13 Jan 2003 15:18:10 -0500 (EST), John Wells wrote:

>Could this be a power supply issue?

It's possible.  This is easiest to test by swapping in a known good
power supply and seeing if that solves it.  

>What would be a good trouble shooting
>strategy?  I told him I would start by unplugging the harddrive, trying
>it, plugging it back in if there're still freezes, and then proceed to do
>the same with each card.  Course, it doesn't sound like it could be a
>harddrive issue since it freezes before post has completed sometimes.

In cases like this, where it's freezing even before you boot up, my
usual tactic is to strip it down to the minimum it takes to be able to
see if the PC is freezing or not - yank all of the expansion cards but
the video, disconnect the floppy and hard drives.  Pretty much the only
thing you leave connected is the video card, the monitor, and the
keyboard.  Power it up, and see if it still flakes.  If it does, you've
pretty much narrowed the problem down to the power supply or the
motherboard (with a slight possibility of a video card or keyboard
problem).  If it runs OK, this gives you a working baseline.  At this
point, I'd add peripherals back in one at a time, until one of them
causes the failure.

Ben
-- 
Ben Coleman oloryn at benshome.net      | The attempt to legislatively
http://oloryn.home.mindspring.com/   | micromanage equality results, at
Amateur Radio NJ8J                   | best, in equal misery for all.


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