Eric Mader wrote: > The graphics hardware is Intel 865G. I haven't installed any proprietary > drivers. I run the random screen saver with the default set of screen > savers. I haven't kept track of which screen saver is running when it > hangs... (I've already recommended "Blank Screen Only" in the post Eric replied to). > I had someone restart the machine four days ago. Since then it's been > sitting in the logon prompt, and it's still running. When I came into > the office this morning, the screen was in power saver mode. This seems > consistent with the theory that the culprit may be the screen saver. On > the other hand, if the screen saver isn't running, the machine isn't > doing much... I'm having a bit of trouble parsing that. Are you saying that if the computer is sitting there, with no-one logged in at the console, and there's not even a screen saver to burn CPU cycles, then the computer is basically idle, and you suspect that the problems might be load related? I'll take your word for it that the computer is idle if no-one is logged in at the console (it's certainly not true for all Unix-like systems). It sounds like a recent Pentium 4 or Celeron machine. These are known to be (electrical) power-crazed, and can output a *lot* of heat. But they have thermal protection in the CPU: they throttle down speed and power consumption if the temperature gets too high. I suppose that it *is* possible that on a badly designed system the extra heat from a loaded Pentium 4 could induce temperature related problems in the rest of the system. But my money would still be on the screen saver (if I was a betting man...) This sounds like an ideal candidate for the SETI at Home client, or something similar: get the machine doing useful work in the background, and see if it affects system stability. James. -- E-mail address: james | Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip? @westexe.demon.co.uk |
