On Sunday 22 October 2006 1:00 pm, "Constantine 'Gus' Fantanas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --I can tell you your BIOS is ancient. HP changed the BIOS for this > laptop many times (I wonder why). Your BIOS should be upgraded to F35 > or F37. I think the newest BIOS is F37, but because there were some > issues with it (I don't remember what), I decided to stay with the F35. > You probably have never upgraded your BIOS, which may be the cause of a > lot of problems.
I want to mention that I'm running the F11 BIOS as well. As HP announced BIOS changes, I watched the release notes. I never saw anything listed as a "fix" that had occurred for me, so I never upgraded. I also heard about people having problems with the intermediate versions, so I was glad I stayed with what worked for me. :) However, having said all that, I think the fact that you have two memory sticks -- that could be different speeds -- could require a BIOS change. My machine has the original two 512MB sticks. One reason why the BIOS may have been static for awhile and then upgraded a lot might be that it takes people awhile before they decide to upgrade the RAM on their laptop, so the problems don't show up right away... Having said that, I would suspect a defective IDE controller. :( I have had 3 IDE controllers fail on me over the years, but always in desktop machines (but not always controllers integrated onto the m/b). The symptoms you describe are consistent with an IDE controller failure. It could be one other thing: the IOAPIC. This is less likely, but possible. (The "Input-Output Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller".) This chip is responsible for converting hardware interrupts into CPU interrupts. It is rare for a problem to occur here, but if it does, hardware interrupts can be delivered to the CPU incorrectly or multiple times (or not at all), and that can wreak havoc with a device driver. I heartily agree with the previous post -- which you haven't answered yet -- that suggested running "tail -f /var/log/messages" in a background window and watch for driver messages. If they come from ide0 (/dev/hda) or ide1 (/dev/hdc), then you've found your culprit. And before you point out that those are separate controllers: they might not be. Many laptop chipsets combine the two controllers into a single ASIC, so a single failure could affect both controllers. I'm really sorry to hear about this problem you're having. :( It's not very practical to replace the IDE ASIC in a laptop. :( Good luck, and I hope it turns out to be something else! -- Frank J. Edwards Edwards & Edwards Consulting, LLC Voice: (813) 996-7954 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Large Attachments To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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