Kc2LTO - Andrew Ragone wrote:
> My machine randomly freezes when im doing work or letting the system idle.
> The only way I can recover is to restart. I originally had x86_64 on my
> system but installed i386 to see if it still happened...and it does.
>
> My best guess to the problem is something hardware related [i have an old
> PCI graphics card]. But I have read that this problem occurs to some other
> people and disappears after a few minutes which is not the case on my
> system.
A hardware problem sounds like a good guess, from what we've been told.
How old *is* the graphics card? Are we talking about something like a
GeForce 2 MX or something like an S3 Trio?
Could you try using telinit 3 to drop down to text mode and see what
happens? Maybe you could do a few kernel compiles to stress the machine.
(The graphics card could still be at fault if the machine keeps
freezing, but it's much less likely: I had a PCI S3 ViRGE that would
reliably work in text or VESA mode, but crash Windows or Linux as soon
as a driver used the 2D acceleration).
It's possible that you'll get some helpful output on screen if it
freezes in text mode, too: can you leave the computer on for (say) 24
hours to see if it does freeze and what happens?
Do you mean that the freezes appear to be equally likely to occur
whether the machine is heavily loaded (say, compiling a kernel) or
left idle? If so, it's very unlikely to be the processor, and pretty
unlikely to be the memory. You still might want to try an extended
memtest86 on the machine, just to see if it freezes in memtest86.
If stressing the machine makes freezes more likely, then suspect the
processor, memory, insufficient cooling, or insufficient power.
(Although unless you've got lots of disks, that doesn't sound too
likely: neither PCI cards in general nor AMD-64 processors are power-
hungry by today's standards).
Alternatively, you can try something like Knoppix or tomsrtbt
(www.toms.net/rb) to change the software environment, and (again) see
if the freezes come back.
If after that, you're still puzzled, then unplug everything you can,
beg or borrow some spare RAM (and ideally another CPU) if you can,
try replacing the power supply, and if the system still freezes,
blame the motherboard.
I'm afraid it sounds as though you're going to be spending some time
without your desktop.
Good hunting!
James.
--
E-mail address: james@ | When computers emit smoke, it means they've chosen a
westexe.demon.co.uk | new Pope. Unfortunately, they invariably choose the
| wrong one and immediately get condemned to
| nonfunctionality for heresy. -- Anthony DeBoer
