Mandrake 10.1 instability

[rachelandrew]

The onboard sound is as follows:

"Realtek ALC650 5.1 channel audio controller
AC97 v2.2 compiant
analog: line-out (6-ch), microphone, CD-in, AUX
digital: optical SPDIF in and out, coaxial SPDIF out"

I'm not too bothered about sound - however I want to rule out that being the cause of the crashes.

I'll give the memory swapping a go. I would have given up on this by now but for the fact that I have had KDE running perfectly happily on this box under Debian - without any special drivers.

Rachel

[rachelandrew]

I've tested the memory sticks one at a time, in each of the slots and the crashing continues in the same way no matter what configuration.

I have also installed the memtester application and this immediately started throwing failures when I started it up with the two sticks in. I've set it off testing one of the sticks individually now. It seems as if I can only test half of the memory at a time, is this correct?

Does it seem feasible that two sticks could fail together in this way? Or possibly that the previous installation of Debian Sarge didn't highlight the problem? At this point it being failed memory would be quite a relief! However I don't want to replace the memory if it is very unlikely that the two would go at the same time like this.

Rachel

[Skid]

Rachel,

Be sure that the RAM sticks are seated firmly in the DIMM slots. It is often difficult to seat the RAM properly while the motherboard is still in the case. I have had trouble with systems and it turned out one stick wasn't in all the way.

Let us know how the memory tests go.

It would be rare, but not unheard of, that both sticks of RAM went bad at the same time. Have you overclocked this system at all before?

Skid

[rachelandrew]

Tested both sticks - both report some failures. So I tried a stick of 512 Corsair memory from my server (which is on the Shuttle supported list) the crashing problem remains.

Any other ideas for things to try? This does seem to be a KDE issue at this point. The problem with urpmi segfaulting was resolved by the installation of the NVidia network driver and since then nothing has actually crashed the box, it's just the window manager that goes.

Is there any possibility that KDE got itself into a mess prior to my installing the correct network driver? I could reinstall this box without KDE, install the NVidia stuff, then install KDE - if that is a possibility. I guess the other option is to upgrade to KDE3.3.

Rachel

[rachelandrew]

I'm back in Debian Sarge, with KDE running flawlessly on a standard net install. Why I couldn't get it running in mandrake is beyond me ...

Trying to salvage something from the experience I was impressed with the look of Mandrake and think it will be ideal for desktops in the office (I don't think my experience was usual!) as I think it will be a nicer transition for people used to Windows. However, as a working desktop is my priority I think I'll be sticking with Debian for the time being.

Thanks for all the help,

Rachel

[Skid]

Rachel,

Sorry to hear it didn't work out. Your problem was quite puzzling. Esp. with KDE running on one distro and not on another.

Skid