[opensuse] Hardware problem
Hi, Last weekend I experienced problems with my home desktop. It locked up hard. When I power-cycled I remarked that some letters of the BIOS boot-messages were distorted. If I had these, the PC could boot but it couldn't go into graphics mode. Character-mode seemed fine. Now and then it worked for a while. I suspected the video-card. I took it out, and this morning I put it in a PC here at work. Now it seems to work OK ! It's running a few hours now without problem. I ran memtest for several hours with zero errors but the screen was distorted. With this I mean : the characters are there and readable but there were a high number of small vertical lines, few tens of pixels long, 1 pixel wide (I guess these numbers). The video-card is an NVidia GeForce 8500 GT, a PCIexpress 16x board. Next thing is the power-supply I'm going to investigate. Before it locked up, it had good voltages though. Anything else ? Thanks for hints. If it matters, the machine runs suse 10.2, but OS 11.2 is also installed and has the same problems. -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Koenraad Lelong -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2010/03/08 12:43 (GMT+0100) Koenraad Lelong composed:
Last weekend I experienced problems with my home desktop. It locked up hard. [ ...] the power-supply I'm going to investigate. Before it locked up, it had good voltages though. Anything else ? If it matters, the machine runs suse 10.2, but OS 11.2 is also installed and has the same problems.
Running 10.2 likely the machine is more than 3 years old. That's near the end of a period of several years of motherboards and power supplies manufactured with defective caps. Pop your covers and inspect. I've had good luck replacing just caps, but most people replace the affected motherboard or power supply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague -- "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Felix Miata schreef:
On 2010/03/08 12:43 (GMT+0100) Koenraad Lelong composed:
Last weekend I experienced problems with my home desktop. It locked up hard. [ ...] the power-supply I'm going to investigate. Before it locked up, it had good voltages though. Anything else ? If it matters, the machine runs suse 10.2, but OS 11.2 is also installed and has the same problems.
Running 10.2 likely the machine is more than 3 years old. That's near the end of a period of several years of motherboards and power supplies manufactured with defective caps. Pop your covers and inspect. I've had good luck replacing just caps, but most people replace the affected motherboard or power supply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
Hi Felix, The machine is about 2.5 years old. 10.2 was current then. The problem with those caps is older I believe (I had such a board). Still, I'm going to check. Thanks for reminding me. -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Koenraad Lelong -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 3/8/2010 3:43 AM, Koenraad Lelong wrote:
Hi,
Last weekend I experienced problems with my home desktop. It locked up hard. When I power-cycled I remarked that some letters of the BIOS boot-messages were distorted. If I had these, the PC could boot but it couldn't go into graphics mode. Character-mode seemed fine. Now and then it worked for a while. I suspected the video-card. I took it out, and this morning I put it in a PC here at work. Now it seems to work OK ! It's running a few hours now without problem. I ran memtest for several hours with zero errors but the screen was distorted. With this I mean : the characters are there and readable but there were a high number of small vertical lines, few tens of pixels long, 1 pixel wide (I guess these numbers). The video-card is an NVidia GeForce 8500 GT, a PCIexpress 16x board. Next thing is the power-supply I'm going to investigate. Before it locked up, it had good voltages though. Anything else ? Thanks for hints. If it matters, the machine runs suse 10.2, but OS 11.2 is also installed and has the same problems.
This used to be fairly common occurrence years ago when vid cards were populated with plug in memory chips. Usually you could simply squeeze each chip tightly into its socket. Unless you have some socketed memory its unlikely to be your problem. You could have a clock issue on the card. But your post above seems to suggest it works fine in a different machine. (You said it did, but then the next sentence said it didn't, so which is it). Also check the motherboard for bulging/leaking Capacitors. I've seen this manifest itself in wierd ways as well, as often these are uses in filter circuits and when they short out unwanted frequencies seep into other circuits, causing havoc. If you find them, your mobo is toast. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
John Andersen schreef:
On 3/8/2010 3:43 AM, Koenraad Lelong wrote:
Hi,
...
This used to be fairly common occurrence years ago when vid cards were populated with plug in memory chips. Usually you could simply squeeze each chip tightly into its socket. Unless you have some socketed memory its unlikely to be your problem.
You could have a clock issue on the card. But your post above seems to suggest it works fine in a different machine. (You said it did, but then the next sentence said it didn't, so which is it).
Also check the motherboard for bulging/leaking Capacitors. I've seen this manifest itself in wierd ways as well, as often these are uses in filter circuits and when they short out unwanted frequencies seep into other circuits, causing havoc. If you find them, your mobo is toast. Hi John,
Sorry if I was unclear. When the PC began to have problems, I booted the install disk of OS 11.1, which I had at hand. With that I ran memtest for about 18 hours. I had zero errors, but the screen had those stripes. I then removed the video-card and plugged it in a PC at work. It's working for about 24hours now, without problems. About the memory-chips in sockects : the card does not have them, they are soldered on the board (BGA). About the clock : I didn't tweak it, so I presume it should work, like it always had in the years before. There are no bulging or leaking capacitors on the mother-board or the video-card. The strange thing is I plugged the video-card of the PC at work in the PC at home and started 3 glxgears and resized them. I saw the temperature of the GPU rise, but it didn't have problems. But since it's another card (GeForce 7500 something) I can't rule out the power-supply. I'm going to switch the cards again tonight and see what happens. I'm also going to swap the power-supply if the problems appear again. Thanks for the suggestions. -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Koenraad Lelong -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2010/03/09 08:24 (GMT+0100) Koenraad Lelong composed:
There are no bulging or leaking capacitors on the mother-board or the video-card.
What about the power supply? They tend to use cheaper caps than motherboards, so more likely the bulging/leaking in them. P.S I've never encountered or heard of bulging/leaking cap encounters on video cards. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 03/09/2010 02:38 AM, Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/03/09 08:24 (GMT+0100) Koenraad Lelong composed:
There are no bulging or leaking capacitors on the mother-board or the video-card.
What about the power supply? They tend to use cheaper caps than motherboards, so more likely the bulging/leaking in them.
P.S I've never encountered or heard of bulging/leaking cap encounters on video cards.
Yep......but only once. It was on a Matrox of "yesteryear." Fred -- “The sword of Muhammad and the Qur'an are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty and truth which the world has ever known - an unmitigated cultural disaster parading as God's will.” --Sir William Muir -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hello, On Tue, 09 Mar 2010, Fred A. Miller wrote:
On 03/09/2010 02:38 AM, Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/03/09 08:24 (GMT+0100) Koenraad Lelong composed:
There are no bulging or leaking capacitors on the mother-board or the video-card.
What about the power supply? They tend to use cheaper caps than motherboards, so more likely the bulging/leaking in them.
P.S I've never encountered or heard of bulging/leaking cap encounters on video cards.
I have a ~3yr old EVGA nVidia 7600GS with almost all caps bulging and/or leaking lying around here. It was still working when I switched it for a new MSI 8400GS (a couple of months ago) in the "new" PC.
Yep......but only once. It was on a Matrox of "yesteryear."
Old box: $ lspci | grep VGA 00:0b.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 1064SG [Mystique] (rev 02) Doesn't even have a cooler, just the naked Chip (4 MB version though): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MatroxMystique2MBcard.jpg http://www.yjfy.com/images/oldhard/video/1064.jpg Caps? *scratches head* ;) -dnh -- The only languages that can comfortably be written with the repertoire of US-ASCII happen to be Latin, Swahili, Hawaiian and American English without most typographic frills. It is rumoured that there are more languages in the world. -- Roman Czyborra -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Felix Miata schreef:
On 2010/03/09 08:24 (GMT+0100) Koenraad Lelong composed:
There are no bulging or leaking capacitors on the mother-board or the video-card.
What about the power supply? They tend to use cheaper caps than motherboards, so more likely the bulging/leaking in them.
P.S I've never encountered or heard of bulging/leaking cap encounters on video cards. Hi,
An update. Yesterday I placed the original card in the PC. It ran almost the whole day, without problems. I had a spare power-supply at hand, but I didn't need it. As far as I can see, the original power-supply has no strange looking capacitors. So the problem went away. It can't be bad contacts because one of the first things I did was removing the card and reseating it several times, to clean the contacts. But the problem still was there. Of course nothing is certain. Thanks for your suggestions. -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Koenraad Lelong -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (5)
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David Haller -
Felix Miata -
Fred A. Miller -
John Andersen -
Koenraad Lelong