[Novalug] Dead Computer Diagnosis
Greg Faust
gregfaust@hotmail.com
Thu Nov 16 13:40:26 EST 2006
David,
I agree with the PSU diagnosis. I'd like to mention that I have seen power
supplies that look good on a multimeter, but have too much "ripple" in the
DC power for a stable system. You would need an oscilliscope to look at the
waveform and there aren't really any criteria for what works and what
doesn't. I would probably just replace the PSU with something I wouldn't
mind keeping as a spare if it doesn't resolve the problem.
-Greg Faust-
>From: "David A. Hammond" <hammonds@starpower.net>
>Reply-To: hammonds@erols.com
>To: novalug@calypso.tux.org
>Subject: [Novalug] Dead Computer Diagnosis
>Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:46:39 -0500 (EST)
>
>Hi,
>
>I have a machine which is (nearly) dead and I need some help
>getting started on diagnosing it. There's not much to go on.
>
>When I hit the power switch, it lights up and both fans (power
>supply and cpu) spin. Nothing else happens. The keyboard
>lights don't flash, there's no beep, and no synch is sent to
>the monitor. As best I can tell there are no diagnostic leds
>anywhere on the motherboard.
>
>What led up to this state is as follows:
>
>This machine is primarily used as a file server, name server,
>DHCP server, etc. A couple of nights ago it wasn't serving
>anything and I could not ping it, so I turned the monitor on
>and found that I had no synch. So I tried to reboot it. It
>got pretty far into the boot sequence (Fedora Core 3) and
>hung. So I tried again. It didn't get as far so I tried
>yet again. This time it quit even quicker, so I figured maybe
>it was a heat problem and unplugged it for about a half an
>hour. When I powered it back up I went into setup so I could
>watch the cpu temperature. It started at 36 C and slowly climbed to 45 C
>where it seemed to level off. I then turned
>it off but did not unplug it. When I came back the next
>evening, I found it in the state described at the top of this
>note.
>
>One other thing: When I was trying the reboots the first
>night, I could power the machine off with the front panel
>switch but I could not power it back up unless I unplugged
>it for about 10-15 seconds. Does this give any hints?
>
>I have a digital voltmeter, so I can check voltages out of
>the power supply. I haven't done that yet.
>
>(Please respond to the list or to hammonds@erols.com. I am
>using webmail from work now, so the From address is probably
>not right.)
>
>TIA,
>Dave
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