John, On Sunday 13 March 2005 16:41, John Kelly wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:46:35 +1000, Barbara Baker
<jenspen@optushome.com.au> wrote:
After 11 hours the same black screen. Goodbye 9.2
Recently I started getting segfaults when compiling. My memory is relatively new so I tried reseating it; the problem disappeared.
Run a few passes of Memtest86 (<http://www.memtest86.com/>) to get some confidence that your memory is free from errors.
Then today I started getting scsi errors on one of my drives. So I copied the whole partition to another drive on the same controller, thinking I had a drive getting ready to fail; more of the same scsi errors told me the drive was not causing the problem.
Time to open the case again.
More than once, I've had a box which had intermittent problems with the covers on, but with the covers off, would run fine.
Then you should consider overheating. Make sure all the fans are turning when the system is powered and that none of the heat sinks are clogged with dust.
So today, I removed all the screws from the motherboard mounts, except for one in the top left corner, farthest from the adapter cards. That reduces stress between the adapter cards and the motherboard slots when the covers are screwed back on tight.
It doesn't take much physical stress to create poor electrical connections between adapter cards and their motherboard slots or between memory sticks and their sockets, even when they *appear* to be seated properly; it's the cause of many intermittent problems which are hard to diagnose.
They just don't make 'em like they used to.
That's in part because the demand for performance carries with it an implicit increase in mechanical sensitivity. I have a friend who can't fathom why I put up with as many flat tires as I do when cycling. Low rolling resistance demands high-pressure, thin-walled tires and tubes, and they're intrinsically more vulnerable to flatting. The same goes most other parts. Climbing speed is very weight sensitive, so there's a constant pressure on manufacturers to produce lighter components and frames. That invariably leads to using less material, which produces components susceptible to failure. And so it goes... Randall Schulz