Good suggestion Todd. I'm glad I finished reading all my mail before adding you to the killfile ;-) I had a capacitor blow on a 4 month old motherboard earlier this year. I started to smell smoke and started sniffing around the computers. After pulling the power cords out of the back of Eridor I got the case open just in time to see two capacitors fading from a nice bright orange. Anyways, previous posts have covered most of the stuff I was thinking of (power supply in its death throws, flaky RAM / swap space, over heating CPU, etc). A couple other things to try: - If you're using an off-motherboard IDE, SCSI or video card, reseat it and make sure its not popping lose, this goes for any PCI/ISA/AGP cards, but these are usually the culprits. - Run memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com) on your machine and see if it finds anyhting - Could very well be a driver issue, but it sounds like this just started on its own (without, say, a recent kernel recompile or distro update). If it is, try rolling back - If you've recently changed compilers, try going back to a slightly older version and recompiling anything you compiled recently. I had a bunch of trouble with GCC v3.3.1 causing segmentation faults on AMD hardware. - Clean all the dust bunnies out of your case, especially around the CPU and CPU fans. Dust bunnies screw up air flow and also act like big heat sinks The last few probably don't apply to a work machine, but I'll include for completeness: - If you've overclocked your CPU, AGP bus, main bus, PCI bus, etc. try returning them to "factory" settings - Make sure you aren't overloading your power supply. Yeah I know, this is doesn't happen as often as it used to. Still, add a hard drive, CD-ROM burner, DVD, - If you've overclocked your CPU, AGP bus, main bus, PCI bus, etc. try returning them to "factory" settings - If you're STILL overclocking your CPU, AGP bus, main bus, PCI bus, etc. try returning them to "factory" settings -- Ben Maas - Technology Architect Open Technology Systems, LLC ----------------------------------------------------------- eMail: bmaas at open-techsys.com Web: http://www.open-techsys.com Phone: 952.448.3121 Fax: 952.448.4944 Cell: 612.743.3674 On Monday 20 October 2003 10:46 am, Todd Young wrote: > Along the line of looking at hardware. Look at the capcitors on the > motherboard. Most of them have an "X" in the metal on the top. If the > tops are buldging then the capacitors are fried and you are looking at > other issues if you continue to use the motherboard. > > I'm not sure how many motherboards this affects, but I know for a fact > it affects IBM Intellistation EPro machines, circa manufacture 2001-2. > > There was a batch of bad capacitors that hit the market, I know IBM used > them, but I'm not sure how many other manufacturers did. > > Sam MacDonald wrote: > > On the hardware end look at the power supply. A power supply thats' > > going bad will do funny things like rebooting. A short in your power > > cable could cause real problems. Wake on LAN is another thing to look > > at if it's enabled. I also had a dead SparQ drive cause my machine to > > not boot on a cold start and I think it caused some reboots. > > > > If you fed a Gremlin after midnight you may want to check your kitchen > > :-D > > > > Remember if you had a bad power surge or lightning, and something got > > fried, home owners insurance "should" cover a new or part of a new > > computer :-) My mother in law got a new P4 with all the cool stuff > > after a lightning strike took out her modem and sound board. > > > > Sam. > > > > > > <snip> > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > > http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list