Re: FC5 INstallation Killing Computers

You need to do a bit more work -- number 1 is testing the power supplies in each and every dead computer. As Scott Mueller says in the 17th Edition of "Upgrading and Repairing PC's" -- many times the problem is a bad power supply. That keys with my experience too. When people call me to report a dead machine, about 80% of the time it is a bad power supply. Most of the remaining cases are dead hard drives. I do have one customer now with a lightning struck computer. Dead power supply and dead motherboard -- at least the power regulators on the motherboard are shot, I don't know if the memory and cpu are gone. The cure is simple, replace the bad hardware.

Bob Cochran

----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Gann" <gannr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 9:43 AM
Subject: Re: FC5 INstallation Killing Computers


The strange thing is that all of these computers were working properly. Three were running Windows XP Pro or Windows Server 2003. One was running FC4. They all died during the FC5 installation. My thoughts, in rough order are (1) some problem with the electrical poser in the room (although three on Windows installations on 32 bit machines done at about the same time have caused no problems), some kind of issue involving overheating, if somehow, FC5 is not correctly controlling the fans, or (3) FC5 has trouble with dual AMD computers, at least with the motherboards we are using.

The behavior of the computers is really odd. The one that went “poof” near the start of the installation is totally dead (this one had running FC4 and I was doing a fresh installation). After trying to do the installation a couple times with the other computers, I cannot even turn them on. Letting them sit for a while (a period like overnight) which would allow the computer to completely cool and discharge its capacitors, I can get it started. However, it only runs for a little bit. For example, with Knoppix, I cannot get past the “Hit Any Key to Boot into Knoppix” screen. I checked one that I did get into the BIOS, and the BIOS indicated that the power supply voltages were correct.

Most of these computers were plugged into UPS units, although these are a bit old.. I’ve requested Maintenance to check the power in our lab. The 32 bit computers have 400 watt power supplies and the 64 bit computers have 450 watt power supplies. They have lots of cooling fans, and the cooling units on the CPUs are very robust. These computers have all worked fine in the past running FC4, Win XP Pro, and Win 2003 Server for 2 – 3 years.

If I had to guess it is going to turn out that the power in our lab has problems and that Linux is less tolerant of that than Windows.

Being an old timer I remember something called the “Hacker’s Test”. It had a number of things you had to do to qualify as a true hacker. One was to break hardware with software. I never thought it was possible, except by mis-configuring video cards pr or over-clocking a CPU.

I’m going to try to test the lab current and the power supply current this weekend if I can get in to campus. (I live about 20 miles from campus.)

Thank you very much for your thoughtful replies. They are greatly appreciated.


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