Start, Freeze, restart. Repeat

Hi Guys,

I have an old desktop what just doesn't like to play nicely, and I am sure it is a hardware fault.

During boot up (into linux) it will freeze at different times and need a complete power off and cold boot to continue. Some days this happens 5 or 6 times before it boots successfully, and other days it works first time every time.

None of the OS logs (dmesg, syslog, kdm, X) show any errors at the time of the freeze.

I have systematically removed and re installed all hardware (Network cards, USB cards, Sound cards, Graphics cards & memory) with no obvious effect on the fault.

Any ideas as to how I can identify this fault, or at least elminate the motherboard and processor as causes of this fault?

Cheers

R

Sounds like a motherboard or processor fault. You could try setting the BIOS to default settings. Does the Processor have a fan, and does it work?

hi,
yes follow DaLight's process. what processor is it? this looks like classic symptoms of AMD processors, with a bad heat sink compound layer between the heat sink and the processor surface. try reapplying the paste again afresh, and check for difference.

Hi Guys,

Yes it is an AMD processor with fan (Athlon 1600+). The fan can get a little noisy....

I'll pop the cover off and check the fan / CPU closely.

I do tend to mess around with bios's a bit....I'll also reset to defaults and see what happens.

Thanks for the advice.

R

hi..
before, i have same problem, and it was motherboard's problem

same with alans, i got the same problem and its the motherboard, i swapped the hard disk to the other PC that has the same specs, the problem did not occur. take also the advise of the arani, dalight.