On Fri, 2006-08-18 at 19:54 -0400, Robert Gann wrote: > I have a most distressing problem. I am a faculty member in the > computer and information sciences department at a liberal arts > college. > > > > We have a lab with a number of computers with two AMD 32 bit CPUs and > a few computers with two AMD 64 bit CPUs. > > > > Two years ago we ran FC4 on both types of these computers with no > problem. However, attempting to install FC5 has killed several > computers. We have now burned out two of the 64 bit computers and two > of the 32 bit computers. Generally, the behavior is that they go a > ways into the installation process and hang. After retrying the > installation another time, the computer is basically dead; when I > tried a Knoppix CD-ROM one of them could not get past the screen > telling you to press a key to boot Knoppix. One of the 64 bit > computers went “poof”, and I smelled smoke. It is,of course, > completely dead. > I’ve used Google to see if I could find out about a problem to no > avail. We’re getting pretty desperate. Can anyone offer any > guidance? At this point, we’re even afraid to try another > distribution. We’re starting to install Windows to get the remaining > computers working. > > I’ll be glad to provide more details if they will help. > Thank you in advance.. > Robert, First and foremost, there is not way an operating system, -any- operating could burn a PC; let alone the OS's installer. Period. The only way, I'm aware of, to damage a system using software is to slow-down the CPU/MB fans using special hardware/i2c control software. AFAIK, there's no such software in Fedora Core. (There's a known issue that might cause Linux to trash old-CDROM's firmware but this certainly cannot cause a machine to burn). In general, smoke that is followed by computer death usually means: A. Damaged PSU (power supply unit). B. Power surge. C. Over-heating. (Dead CPU/MB fan. Though new computer should shut down in-case of over heating.) D. Short circuit in one of the computer components, most likely the mother board. Reading through your description of the problem I'd wager it's 3. Open the machine's case, check the CPU and mother board FANs. Are they spinning? Do you see large piles of dust on the heat sinks? (Large metallic object under the fan). Is the heat sink seated firmly? As I said. This is purely a hardware problem. Installing Windows will only kill more machines. Gilboa
