Hardware Questions

[dishawjp]

Hi All,

I've had a lot of problems which at first I was blaming on FC6, but have narrowed down to hardware issues. I was able to install FC6 just fine on two other computers using the same discs that I was trying to install on my computer with, but kept getting weird errors on my computer.

I did replace a hard drive which smartd told me was on its way out, then when I was still having trouble, I ran memtest86 for 12 hours and my RAM checked out OK. Still having issues, I moved my hard drives from IDE channel 2 to channel 1 and also replaced the ribbon cable. Things looked better and I was reinstalling FC5 and FC6 with all seemingly OK when the computer just froze while updating after the installs were complete. It wouldn't boot off the hard drives or the optical drives, it just got to the BIOS splash screen and died. I couldn't even get into the BIOS.

So I think that I must have either had my CPU or motherboard ro both die. Does this sound right to you or could it be something else? Preferably something cheaper.

Anyway, I am pricing out a new Intel MB and an Intel Duo Core 2 2.66 GHz processor from a local computer shop. Supposedly, this motherboard will still work with my DDR RAM and will have an AGP slot for my video card. I really can barely afford to do this right now, and a completely new system or upgrading a lot of other components is out of the question right now.

Any thoughts on this setup? Will I have to run the 64 bit version of FC, or will I still be able to use the discs I have. Right now I have no way to download and install new iso images. Would I need a special (smp?) kernel to work with this processor? If so, is that automatically detected and installed when I install the distro?

Sorry for these really basic questions, but as little as I know about software, I know even less about hardware.

Thanks for any advice. I haven't had a properly running computer at home for weeks now

Jim

[Void Main]

Hmmm, I can think of a couple of things that could cause similar problems (both of which I have had on my main desktop at home over the last couple of years). The first thing I would check is that your CPU fan is in good working order and that the heat sink is nice and clean. Also, remove the heat sink and make sure you are getting good contact with that white contact cream. If your CPU gets hot it can cause this sort of problem. The other thing I just had happen was a weak/failing power supply caused a very similar type of problem. I was convinced I had another motherboard go bad until I moved all the hardware into a new case with a different power supply and it worked just fine.

The easiest thing you can do to narrow it down is to get a known good power supply and remove all of the cards and peripherals from your machine. If you can't get it to boot with just a known good CD-ROM drive, cable, and power supply with nothing else attached then I would say it's a very good chance of it being a bad motherboard. You might be able to get a local shop to verify this for you for a small fee if you take the board in.

[dishawjp]

Voidmain,

Thanks! I'll give that a shot tonight. If it were a simple power supply issue, that would be great, and I do have a couple of them kicking around. The CPU heatsink IS very dusty, and that's why I thought that I might have cooked that. I wasn't holding out a lot of hope of being able to get a new CPU to fit my old MB, and since I thought that there was a good chance that the MB was toast too, I thought that I'd just buy a combo and be done with it. It just wansn't that simple.

I just got back from a the place that was pricing out the MB and CPU for me. After talking to them a bit more, it turned out my RAM wouldn't be compatible and they weren't able to find a MB that would support my AGP graphics card. I'd end up spending a lot more money that way than I'm willing to do right now. They were talking about $450 for MB, RAM and CPU! But they did offer to test my MB and CPU and also said that they'd check to see if they could find someone with some old stock that could get. I'd still be perfectly happy with an old standard P4 processor and MB if I could use my old RAM, video card and other components.

Thanks again for the pointer. I'll check the power supply out tonight and be hugely grateful (yet again) if it turns out to be that simple.

Jim