* Sebastian Wolff <sebastian.wolff@bauing.uni-weimar.de> (Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 08:00:42PM +0100)
Ok, I see that was fun for most of you. But I want to ask you how YOU would react when the shock is only a few hours old.
Different . Yellign, screaming and hollering probabluy, but not blaming it on the OS.
I have to add something: o It is not a compatibility problem: Linux itself worked like a number one. Now the computer simply doesn't start anymore.
o I didn't change the BIOS - I didn't have the chance any more, the only thing I did was to press the reset button.
Did you try powering down the machine completely (i.e. remove batteries, unplug powercord) then try powering it up again with only the powercord connectd (so no batteries ). I've hjad one dead battery (on a compaq armada 486) do something similar.
o Off course there is no backup - I tracked over 2 GB of data only in the last 4 weeks. But the data are saved. I figured out how to take out the harddrive and will insert it in the notebook of a friend.
My colleague generated over 50G of seismic data last week. It's all backed up. It' a matter of comparing the cost of your work vs the cost of a backup medium. 2GB of data is 3 CDrs (or one DVD) . CDwiters are $40's extra on a new laptop, DVD writer are approx $200 - $300. An external firewire/IEEE harddrive costs $300-sh (and will hold 200G of data).
o Concerning a messed up CMOS I have to ask the support to check that. It's in repair right now. After the first observations they said it is definitely something with the mainboard.
o The only interesting thing you should consider: Why happened the same twice? Two notebooks with the same hardware problem? On another list someone told me that he had the same problem. Off course you might laugh at me what I did: But in the good old DOS/Windows world it was quit reasonable. And another thing:
I've quite a bit of experience with dell laptops, and have handled/installed a few dozen over the years. Thi8s has never happened to me (and I've done the hit reset during bootup often enough). Im not surte at which stage you did the poweroff/reset thing, but assuming you did it during the first few seconds of bootup, the harddrive was still mounted readonly.
Are you REALLY sure that an os can't destroy any hardware (possibly overloads etc.)?
Oh I am positive that any piece of hardware can be damaged by the software, but not in the way you describe it. Everything you describes leads me to suggest a hardware error.
Thanks to all for either the entertainment or the advise.
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