Re: Bad Motherboard? Upgrade?

From: Steve Foley (steve.foley_at_DELETE.att.net)
Date: 10/12/05 

Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:56:14 GMT

If the install process has problems, start there.

Are you installing from a CD? Where did you get the CD from? Are they all
from the same source (ie downloaded using the same machine?)

Have you tried replacing the CD drive?

The information travels from the CD, through the CD drive, along the IDE
cable into the controller/motherboard, passes through the CPU and RAM, goes
back out an IDE cable (may be the same one as the CD or may not be) and to
the hard drive.

This pretty much narrows it down to everything in the machine (except maybe
the speaker)

"Augasm" <baconeggsandspam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1129118766.738924.258790@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I'm hoping somebody could shed some light on my problem, and possibly
> advise as to a solution.
>
> I have a computer I built about 3 years ago:
> Shuttle AK37GT KT400 Socket A Motherboard
> Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz)
> Kingston 512MB DDR333 PC2700 RAM
>
> I ran linux exclusively, and it was never quite stable. Redhat 7.3 ran
> best, but after a while I started looking around, and found SuSE 9.0 to
> run OK. I've been running SuSE 9.2 for the last few months, and just
> tried reinstalling SuSE 9.3 Pro off of the CD iso's. The stability of
> the other distros that I tried in between were shocking, and the
> stability of these installs that I did settle on have been getting
> progressively worse. By "unstable", I mean that the installation
> processes themselves tend to freeze frequently, requiring me to start
> over 5-20 times, and the system tends to lock-up apropos of nothing.
> Sometimes the lock-up still allows me to switch to other virtual
> terminals, and lets me type a username to log in, but control
> disappears and I'm never prompted for a password, so I can't do any of
> the usual tricks to recover. But now on SuSE 9.3 Pro, it actually
> freezes in the truest sense -- nothing can be done at all but soft
> reboot.
>
> When I take my harddrive into work, however, for the online updates
> etc, it works just fine when swapped into a computer there. So the
> harddrive can't be the problem (as well, I've used several harddrives
> in the machine, all with the same problem).
>
> The machine has actually been a dual boot along side of the SuSE 9.2
> for the last several months, and while I only run the Windows 2000 when
> I absolutely have to, I haven't had any similar problems -- Windows
> 2000 installs and runs as well as Windows can on any machine.
>
> I've run memory tests exhaustively, and have it set to run one of the
> quicker tests upon every startup (which I usually bypass, of course,
> but I do let it run occasionally). I've never found a problem with the
> memory.
>
> I think it must be a hardware problem, and I'm down to the Motherboard
> or the Chip. I do heaps of computational work, so I don't think it's
> the chip. I think it's probably the motherboard. Is there a diagnostic
> that can be run on the motherboard for me to confirm this?
>
> I'm puzzled why Windows would run OK, while linux would be less
> forgiving. Windows certainly does throw it's share of totally
> uninformative and useless error messages, but they don't appear to have
> much of a consequence -- nothing actually freezes like it does under
> linux. Does anybody have any idea why Windows and linux would run so
> differentially on the same equipment?
>
> Secondly, I'm somewhat willing to spend some money finally fixing this
> problem. If I replace just the motherboard, I could do it pretty cheap,
> as Socket A seems pretty old by now. But if I can't prove that it's the
> motherboard, I should probably spend the money on a whole upgrade at
> the same time, which means board + chip + RAM. All the boards these
> days seem to be 64bit. It appears linux can run fine on 64 bit given
> the architecture directory on the SuSe install mirrors, but will
> Windows 2000 load and run on 64bit? I'm certainly not willing to buy
> another, newer Windows just because I need to occasionally run it
> against my will. If Windows will run, will just about any 64bit board
> suit for both the windows and linux, or must I seek out any particular
> chip sets? I only build a computer every three years or so, and it's a
> completely different scene each time I do.
>
> Any guidance that anyone can offer would be immensely appreciated!
>

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