[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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