On Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 03:58:44PM -0500, Marty wrote: > > I suspected that too, so I ran my own stress tests overnight without > discovering a hardware problem. My tests have always found memory problems > in the past, although sometimes they require a longer testing period. > In addition, this system is my main personal computer, which has been stable > for a long time. At this point it seems unlikely to be a hardware problem. > > I will run some more tests and report back if I find a hardware problem. > A recent experience left me surprised about what can go wrong on a perfectly "stable" system. I was gone from early one morning until late that night one day. I left my machine on, as I always leave it running. When I came home, the machine was sitting there beeping, screen black, not doing anything. I tried rebooting it, but nothing. After testing the CPU, memory and video card in varying combinations with nothing, I called the manufacturer's tech support. Since the motherboard was long out of warranty, they couldn't do very much to help me. But the tech suggested it *could* be a bad BIOS. They shipped me a new BIOS for $10. That turned out to not be the cause. However, at least I have another BIOS which I can use, if necessary. I ended up getting a similar motherboard from NewEgg. The one that went bad was an M7NCD Pro, and I replaced it with an M7NCD Ultra, which is identical, excpet that it has two SATA controllers on board. That's why I kept the BIOS, since the tech told me that the two models used the same BIOS. Anyhow, the machine had never exhibited any symptoms of hardware going bad, or anything amiss. I just cam home to it dead one day. After talking to one of our support techs at school, I found out that this is not an uncommon occurence. The moral of the story is that hardware can go bad all of a sudden with no warning. -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto
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