strange hardware problem

[Gregory D Hough]

Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
> May be. How to know that?
> 
Process of elimination. Boot a live distro and wait. Try another hard 
drive. Swap in a different power supply. Move the ram around to 
different slots and use a pencil eraser here and there. It's a drag but 
we've all had to do it now and again. And that suggestion to look for 
bulbous capacitors is a good idea too.

> However, if it was a problem of that kind that data are lost - that 
> would be visible during startup. It however restarts (after unplugging, 
> and thats btw the only way I can restart it) without a problem.
> 
A few summers back my AMD would keep rebooting itself for no obvious 
reason. Swapping hard drives and power supplies proved to be futile. I 
eventually noticed some dust bunnies had collect around the cpu fins and 
a good cleaning was all that was needed.

Dieing hard drives (at least in my experience) are the most common 
source of hardware failures. Weak power supplies are probably a close 
second.

greg
> zb.
> 
> On 8/18/06, *Gregory D Hough* <mr6re9-mI4xJ4qlgtBiLUuM0BA3LQ at public.gmane.org 
> <mailto:mr6re9-mI4xJ4qlgtBiLUuM0BA3LQ at public.gmane.org>> wrote:
> 
>     Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
>      >
>      > I am still observing that machine.
>      >
>      > It happens very often, every 10-20 minutes. Now I can say that it
>      > reboots itself (always? sometme?) Sometime it is able to recover,
>      > sometime it hangs during self-restarting.
>      >
>      > What "persistent performance counters" means?
>      >
>      > zb.
>      >
>      > On 8/18/06, *Neil Watson* < tlug-neil-8agRmHhQ+n2CxnSzwYWP7Q at public.gmane.org
>     <mailto:tlug-neil-8agRmHhQ+n2CxnSzwYWP7Q at public.gmane.org>
>      > <mailto:tlug-neil-8agRmHhQ+n2CxnSzwYWP7Q at public.gmane.org
>     <mailto:tlug-neil-8agRmHhQ+n2CxnSzwYWP7Q at public.gmane.org>>> wrote:
>      >
>      >     What is the frequency of these occurrences?  Have you tried
>     running some
>      >     persistent performance counters to see if anything shows up?
>      >
>      >
>     Maybe the hard drive is in its death throws?
> 
>  
> 

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