Machine temporarily died? [Solved]

**Workaphobia** · 08-19-2005

This has been very irritating, since it's difficult to predict and reproduce. I can't even remember the exact sequence of events, so let me just say that I've been experiencing some odd behavior today, like two or three times. The first time a game crashed when I tried to start it up on a new X server. Another time there was a process that could not be listed (ps took control of my virtual terminal and halted) or killed - init made a comment about it as I attempted in vain to reboot cleanly. Both of these were a result of my using a buggy CVS version of the game, but I feel it's odd that it would take down the operating system and not just the X display.

What's stranger is that when I power cycled the machine afterwards, I couldn't get the machine to boot - no POST, no BIOS splash screen, it was just dead with no monitor signal. I swaped monitors, graphics card, and memory, and even unplugged IDE devices, but I found that it didn't matter, the problem seemed to be the motherboard or CPU itself and appeared to occur randomly. Most of the time I'd get no video signal at all when I started up, and then maybe one third of the time I might get part of the system to boot and then it'd totally freeze again. This happened both in the middle of linux's boot procedure and while simply browsing the BIOS menu.

I don't really expect anyone to be able to help that much, given the vague and fickle nature of the problem, but I wanted to get it posted just in case it rings a bell for someone. Has this happened to any of you - where the hardware just seems to die for a while when used for most of the day, and then work later? Just a little over an hour ago I thought this motherboard was dead for sure, and now I'm using it to write this post.

Does it sound like an overheating issue? My fans all seem to be working fine, and I don't think I was taxing the processor that much. How would I be able to tell?

AMD Athlon XP / MSI KT4AV

**LondoJowo** · 08-19-2005

It sounds like a power supply issue to me.

**variant** · 08-19-2005

definatly hardware failure of some kind

**tp671** · 08-19-2005

The main clue here is the word "random" . This is almost always a power supply problem. If its a cpu or mainboard, it either works or it dosent. Always get a good quality power supply, its the one place you dont want to go cheap.

**Workaphobia** · 08-20-2005

Thanks for the suggestion. The power supply was where I started - I upgraded from 300W to 400W, but it did nothing. A subsequent motherboard swap didn't help either, nor did changing memory. Now I'm using the second power supply, a third motherboard, my original memory, and another CPU. Right now I don't want to express any confidence that this will solve my problem, lest the pagan god of hardware fury strke me down for my hubris.

I guess we'll see.

**Workaphobia** · 08-21-2005

It was in fact the CPU. When transferred to another machine, it died altogether. I'm now able to keep my linux box up from dawn to dusk once more.

**tp671** · 08-22-2005

Glad to hear you got it working, i would have never guessed it was the cpu!

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Machine temporarily died? [Solved]

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