Flaky system

[Lincoln]

Problem: Random reboots and freezes.

System: Manufactured by Matrox about 1998 or 99. I don't have the specs so I can only eyeball it. It has dual 733Mhz processors made by Pentium, and an Asus mobo.

There's a scsi card for an external hard drive array that I'm not currently using.

392 MB of RAM, I don't know what type.

The power supply is a brand new Antec 430W and the hard drive has been freshly reformatted and a new install of Win2K is on it, so I don't believe it to be a software or PSU problem.

I just removed the USB PCI card after the last time it went down because I figured I'd just start ripping pieces out one at a time until it stopped and call that piece the culprit :rolleyes: Anyone have a better suggestion?

[Thrax]

Memory.

[primesuspect]

What he said. Now Keebs, I'm not one to lecture, but being as you are part of the management of this site, don't you think you should use this thread (http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3220) first? :)

[Lincoln]

Thrax said
Memory.
That's probably my guess as well, because of the pattern of reboots/freezes. It's been happening mostly just as I finish installing something or am in the middle of copying files. On the other hand, it didn't reboot for 24 hours when I just left it here folding and didn't touch it.

[primesuspect]

[-----------------------------------------------] <-- Total banks of RAM

[-----------------------------------------xx---] <-- Theoretical "bad" bank

[-------------------] <-- part used by folding - no crash

[-----------------------------------------:eek2:--] <--part that fuxxors when you do stuff.

[Lincoln]

primesuspect said
What he said. Now Keebs, I'm not one to lecture, but being as you are part of the management of this site, don't you think you should use this thread (http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&amp;threadid=3220) first? :)

In all honesty, I don't have time to read nearly as much in the forums as I'd like. I basically try to keep up on Feedback, Folding, Case/Mod, and Staff. It wasn't a "non-starting" system so I didn't even venture into that forum. My bad.

[primesuspect]

Yeah, but don't you think my diagram just pwns?

[Enverex]

General Keebler said
It has dual 733Mhz processors made by Pentium

:rolleyes2

NS

[Thrax]

I have a 2.32GHz processor made by Athlon!

[GHoosdum]

;D ;D

OMG this thread has me rolling on the floor crapping my pants with the hilarity of it all!

[MediaMan]

MM steps in to point out the search button to Keebs. :p

Flaky systems. EG random reboots/corrupted data are most likely one of the following three.

a) bad ide/scsi cable.
b) bad memory
c) bad memory combination..eg nothing wrong with the memory each on its own but they play poorly together.

Detective solutions.

www.simmtester.com for DocMemory or run MEMTEST and check out each stick by itself then togehter.

If those check out b and c are most likely not the culprit. Look next to the cables. Of course a good cleaning and reseating of all components is a good thing. Once data has been corrupted then it will continue to give you problems so clean install is in order.

[Lincoln]

Thanks for the link...

I think I've sustained enough abuse for one night :rolleyes:

/me grumbles about posting questions on bitbender from now on

[mmonnin]

Random reboots can come from PSUs as well. You said its new, did the problem occur and the newly installed PSU?

[Lincoln]

mmonnin said
Random reboots can come from PSUs as well. You said its new, did the problem occur and the newly installed PSU?

Yeah, it happened before and after putting in the new Antec. I'm going to run the mem test tomorrow if I make it into work.