[ale] Losing stability

[Calvin Harrigan]

Christopher Fowler wrote:
> I've written off older hardware because I've lost old hardware recently.
> It just seems like PC these days aren't able to go much past 3 or 4
> years.  A troubling fact.
> 
> Could be the following:
> 
> 1.  Bad CD drive (Remove it)
> 2.  Bad hard drive (Try a new one)
> 
> 
> I had a machine behave like this and the conclusion was that it was a
> bad disk.  The problem was that the disk holding swap was bad and when
> the drive kept retrying the system would appear to "hang".  Sometimes
> even reboot.  One idea is to not use swap and force everything in
> memory.  Not sure if 512mb is enough these days with GNOME and other
> crap running.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 2006-10-30 at 09:25 -0500, Charles Shapiro wrote:
>> My main box at home is having Serious Troubles.  On startup it often
>> will hang (no screen output) with the CD light lit steady until I
>> press & hold the "off" switch to retry. Other behaviors include
>> appearing to start up and then emitting random beeps through the
>> speaker with no screen output, or giving random core dumps on various
>> scripts in /etc/init.d.  I've also experienced  spontaneous reboots
>> and random hangs/program failures in X windows.  The "memory speed"
>> number given in the initial startup screen sometimes changes from
>> boot-up to boot-up as well.  The system is a home-brew about 4 years
>> old and lightly used; leadtek WinFast K-series MB, athlon chip, cheap
>> simple video card, single 512 MB DRAM stick. Processor temperatures
>> appear to be within acceptable ranges, at least according to the
>> "syshealth" part of the BIOS. I've enabled the full memory test in the
>> POST, but so far that hasn't picked up any problems.
>>
>> I'm thinking that the problem is either memory or motherboard. I've
>> removed, air-blasted, and re-seated the memory stick in a new slot
>> without change in behavior. At  this point I'm considering getting
>> some new memory and, if that doesn't change the behavior, replacing
>> the motherboard.  
>>
>> Does this seem reasonable? The clock appears steady, so I'm assuming
>> the BIOS battery is OK, but perhaps that's a factor?
>>
<snip>
Run a memory test program like memtest86

http://www.memtest86.com/
http://www.memtest.org/

Calvin