Ronald J. Hall wrote:
On Saturday 26 June 2004 06:36 pm, Dennis Myers wrote:
->Ron, did you try swapping out the ram? Sometimes windows will run on faulty ->ram but linux does not. Been there before. HTH
Nope - not sure I have any extra Ram of that spec for his machine - of course I could try any Ram as long as the MB accepts it, right? I guess I could do the "clean the contacts and reseat" ritual while I'm at it as well. Thanks for the suggestion.
Ronald; Windows is renown for their so-called "memory manager" and it is often the reason for system crashes. Due to the way it operates, it could easily be quite some time before a flaw in your RAM could have been missed. If one module of RAM on a single stick is defective or was damaged by an electrical surge, your son's system could have continued to operate for some time until that exact module or memory address was accessed by Windows.
In comparison, Linux essentially grabs and manages all/most of your reported ram on bootup and controls it dynamically. This is only one of many reasons why Linux is considerably more stable.
It also explains why Linux could have failed long before Windows did. It would be a bit if a stretch, but certainly not impossible. You should be able to do a Google for Memtest86 and download a bootable floppy version of it. Then you can boot from the floppy and determine for yourself if this is your actual problem.
Also, you should be able to grab hard drive diagnostics programs from Maxtor/Quantum and/or Seagate. If your drive is a Maxtor or Quantum, they have a nice ISO file you can download which includes extensive diagnostics and additional tools, which you can then burn to a bootable CD.
Either scenario (bad hard drive or RAM)sounds possible, so it might be worth your while to determine exactly which is causing the problem before you start replacing parts.
HTH
Lanman
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