Help me determine what's fried

**Replicon** · 12-22-2007 09:03 PM

Hmm, I think my linux box (which I've had for about 2.5 years) has croaked. Perhaps someone here can help me figure out exactly what the root cause is, without having to try each component manually in a working machine.

Relevant hardware:

Motherboard: ASUS P5AD2-E Premium (Proactive ai Series)
Graphics Card: GV-NX62TC128D (basically nVidia GeForce 6200)
Case/Power: COOLER MASTER CAV-T01-WWC Silver/Blue Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 380W Power Supply

My suspicion is the Motherboard, but it MIGHT be the graphics card... Hell, it might be the RAM...

Symptoms and stuff:

1) Background:

- This box wasn't constantly on... I would turn it off when not using (hey, I saw a NOTICEABLE difference in my electric bill during the summer).

- For most of my ownership of it, I had Debian on it, and it was rock solid, but many pieces were disabled (e.g. the hardware accelerated graphics, sound, etc. - all stuff I didn't need or feel like being bothered with).

- Recently, I decided to nuke it and install Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy), and try to get everything to work.

- On an unrelated note, I thought it was weird that when I let it do what it wanted with my hard drive, it kinda didn't seem to create a separate swap partition, but I trust it knows what it's doing with the default partitioning scheme).

2) Initial issues:

- When I turned on the proprietary 6200 drivers, I noticed that Compiz was being very slow. Like, really slow. I'm not 100% sure what I did... I think I might have installed a package or something, and it PARTIALLY helped... When I had it finally "working", it was still very slow when first loading X... but then when I switched to TTY1 and back to TTY7, it auto-fixed itself every time.

- Every now and then, if I left it there, it would lock up during screen saver (like, I'd find the screensaver frozen on the screen, and there was nothing to do). I had to hard boot it.

3) More serious issues

It really quickly reached a point where it wouldn't ever fully boot up. It sometimes gets farther than other times:

- Sometimes, it gets to the "Ubuntu progress bar while booting splash screen thing"

- Sometimes it doesn't even get to the GRUB loader...

- One time, I actually got a "Failed CPU overclocking" type error

- Sometimes, it doesn't even get anywhere (hit power, it turns on, nothing happens)

- One time, I went into the BIOS to look around, and after a while of going through it, it gave me 2 short beeps (and then kept chugging along). It did this once or twice before locking up.

SO then... here is the list of possibilities:

- Motherboard is fried
- (unlikely) CPU is horked
- Video card is misbehaving
- RAM is hosed
- Power supply is too weak for the higher-power combination I've got going, with the video card drivers enabled (??)
- Power supply has dust in it or something and it's causing it to be too weak hehe

I need your help to find a good, systematic way of eliminating the possibilities.

- I have yet to look under the hood and empty a can of compressed air into the various fan blow holes (never know, it's been a couple of years).
- I'm thinking the CPU possibility can be eliminated right away, cause I probably wouldn't even get to POST if it were the case.
- I think I have an old copy of Memtest sitting around somewhere that I can use to check the ram.
- I also want to take a very close look at the power requirements of all the components, and whether my supply is just not good enough (but I highly doubt that - I was careful to get a good motherboard and good power supply, IIRC).

Does anyone know any good diagnostic tool that is bootable, or can help check the remaining pieces and eliminate various possibilities?

cheers!

**ninja9578** · 12-22-2007 10:53 PM

On a side note, Ubuntu did make a swap partition, it just doesn't let you see it.

It's probably not the CPU, nor the RAM. Those are both usually pretty solid, even when they get old. The stalled screensaver is probably not a symptom. For some reason I've seen a lot of cases where the screensaver just stops for no reason, it's most likely a glitch in the software that's yet to be found.

I know that Ubuntu had many diagnostic packages (at least they used to.) You found nothing when you did a synapsis search? Try again, use a variety of phrases. "Hardware diagnosis," "hardware test"...

Sounds like motherboard, but let Ubuntu check itself out before swapping it out to see for sure.

**Replicon** · 12-23-2007 12:35 AM

If I can get it to boot into Ubuntu, I'll try hehe. I can't actually get it to that point right now. But it might be a power supply issue. I've got a lot of stuff on the one splitter, and I do notice that every now and then, my laptop needs to recharge from like 95% all of a sudden. I always thought it was just random battery leakage, but maybe it sometimes operates partially on batteries cause of all the power I'm drawing when the other PC is on.

My first course of action will be to separate what gets plugged into which outlet (or at least unplug everything to test), and go through the thing with compressed air. That's probably for next month, since I'm completely swamped until the end of December hehe. Thanks for the tips. I definitely don't intend on swapping hardware until I'm 100% sure something's fried.

**Ynot** · 12-23-2007 02:18 AM

CPU's out
as you mentioned, it wouldn't finish the POST if this was the case

Just cause it's easy to do
try a memory test first off

if the memory test fails, and you can get hold of another machine (friend's, work, whatever) with the same RAM type, swap the ram over with known working sticks
and see if it cures it - then it's off to buy some new ram

Next, the power supply
Just get hold of a beefy PSU and see if this changes anything (again, you could borrow one from a known working machine, rather than buying a new one)

If none of the above solves it,
swap the graphics card over to something else
(anything will do, doesn't have to be compiz capable, but if it is, great)

Good luck

**ninja9578** · 12-23-2007 02:59 AM

If it's not compriz capable, make sure that you switch to your other theme manager, or else you will be false bad results.

**Ynot** · 12-23-2007 03:01 AM

Originally Posted by ninja9578

If it's not compriz capable, make sure that you switch to your other theme manager, or else you will be false bad results.

compiz (by default) gracefully unloads itself and loads metacity if there's any issues
shouldn't be a problem

**Replicon** · 12-23-2007 08:38 PM

Indeed, anything to not have to mistakenly swap out the motherboard (pain in the ass to do, comparatively).

**Replicon** · 01-13-2008 09:11 PM

Hmm, yeah, I'm definitely starting to lean towards the video card, having played around with it a bit more. I'll try disabling the nvidia drivers and seeing if I stop getting kernel panics and the likes. If that at least stabilizes the system, then I'll be fairly confident it's a video card issue. Then I'll look into swapping the video card for something that's got officially supported drivers... any recommendations? It doens't have to be top of the line. I guess anything I can borrow from someone that can sit in a PCIEX16 slot and supports hardware acceleration will do. I guess ATI is the correct answer, but I've not been on the market for video cards in a long time. I should also contact ASUS and find out if there's a known issue with that mobo + enabling a GPU + ubuntu, but I don't think they'll be of any help...

and so, the saga continues

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