On Thu, 2001-12-20 at 11:17, Kelly McCormick wrote: > Thanks for the quick response civil! > > > > > Nonstop, eh? > > > > Err, ok, I guess I meant "exclusively" although the system does get a LOT of > usage, I do sleep once in a while! ;) > > > > > I bet you slowly toasted the on-board electrolytic capacitors so that they > > dried out. Try a bigger case fan to keep it a little cooler inside. > > > > I'm sure this couldn't hurt, but the marathon Quake3 sessions that I used to > put this box through under windoze never seemed to cause a problem. Since > replacing the first MB the heaviest workout this thing has seen is running > mozilla, and windoze98 before I installed Mandrake. > > > Of course memtest-x86.bin is on the mandrake CD under images/ and you can > dd > > it or rawrite it to floppy and maybe it will boot and test your memory > just > > to be safe. > > > > Bootup never makes it to accessing the floppy, not an option. > > > What are the dead symptoms? Are fans running or nothing at all? If > nothing > > at all, it can be a shorted cap or other short on the mobo or the power > > supply. If fans run, look for a dead video card or processor or a bad > cap. > > > > At powerup, fans are on, power is getting to both hard drives, dvd, and > cdrom. Can't tell if floppy drive has power. Monitor powers up but stays > black most of the time, once in a while will make it to dell splash screen . > Keyboard and mouse both show signs of life, but nothing else. > Indicator lights on back say that the bios, memory, pci/isa bus, and > video card all failed. > > >SNIP- > > and after a month of "rest" the dells were supplied with whatever trash > disks > > hardware testing happened to have and they recognized them. Even the > third > > Dell from a different user which died in exactly the same way--no > recognition > > of hard drive was OK after a month off and with a different hdd. How that > > happened is that I took the three back to purchasing and the agent there > > wanted more detail on what was wrong and sent them to hardware testing > after > > a month. > > That's strange, noticed something similar the first time I had this problem, > system would boot up after letting it sit powered down for a full day or > two, but would soon go into a self rebooting loop and eventually not boot. > I'm afraid I'm not patient enough to try waiting a month though. lol > > > SO you may have that problem... If you have another computer what happens > if > > you swap hard drives between the two? > > > > Hard drives are fine, checked that, they are simply not even being accessed > at power up. > > > Civileme > > QA Team > > > > I guess what I'm looking for is any possible reason why mandrake would put > more stress on my MB than windoze? I can't afford to keep replacing the MB > after the warranty on this thing runs out, and every time I try running > linux on it I end up with MB problems. I'd hate to be stuck in windoze hell > because of this. > > One thing that seems like a potential suspect is the power management > feature. I never use this in win98 since it just resulted in a locked up > system, but have been using it in mandrake. (for those occasions when I do > sleep) When my monitor goes into standby mode, the indicator light on the > front is supposed to turn from green to amber, instead it blinks back and > forth between the two. Also I have seen one of the monitors adjustment > screens pop up briefly on a few occasions. Doesn't stay long enough to tell > which one. Is it possible that power management is actually constantly > turning the monitor off and on and so burning up something on the MB? Or am > I just grasping at straws here? > > Thanks in advance, > Kelly > > > > ------------=_1008884634-11608-820 > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Ummm, I think that is a straw. It is likely a BIOS bug... Try disconnecting everything but floppy and then downloading the most recent BIOS from DELL and seeing if you can flash it, assuming you have access to a computer to do those things (That's a use [finally] for internet cafes besides good coffee). The Dells we had would _never_ recognize the original drives again, and we were using Optiplex GX-110, which is supposed to be one of their better products.
We do have to remember that Dell is under the same stress as the others for cost-sensitivity and therefore is forced to cut corners to stay alive. I know the floppies on those models are so cheap, they cannot even report the size of mounted media. Civileme
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
