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Subject: offtopic: weird hardware problem?!

Author: Rick Bischoff

Date: 01:11:18 09/06/03


Hi all, sorry for the offtopic post, but I trust all of you more than Joe Schmoe
at the local computer store.  Anywho, I have a very weird transient hardware
error..

System)
AMD Athlon-XP 1700+, 512 MB PC-100 RAM in an ABit KR7A motherboard.
Video card is GeForce3 Ti200
Sound card is SoundBlaster Live!
Ethernet card 1 is Intel Pro Express 100
Ethernet card 2 is generic Linksys
Hard drive is 40GB Western Digital

It is currently running a fresh (as in installed yesterday after giving up on
trying to install Gentoo (see below)) Windows XP install, fully patched.  All
components seems to be working ok.

Symptom 1)
I was trying to install Gentoo Linux the other day and "gcc" would have random
segmentation faults during the build process.  For example, during the kernel
build, "make bzImage", gcc would report an internel error, segmentation fault.
I would then run "make bzImage" again and it would compile the file it
previously crashed on just fine.

Symptom 2)
Fritz 8 crashes during Full Analysis at random times.  It also crashed during a
normal game after a fresh install.

History--
This problem had been occuring for, oh, say the last 6 months, but since my main
machine is the G4, I just let this box sit here and be a router... But I want to
start using this computer again.  So, I suspected the problem was with
overheating, and I replaced the CPU fan with a stock fan from the computer store
and added a case fan and also cleaned up tons of dust.  The problem is still
here even though my CPU never goes above 51 celsius.

I did sucessfully run the memtest program and it passed in 27 minutes, so I am
pretty sure it is not a memory problem-- which leaves two things... The CPU is
faulty or the hard drive is-- how do I determine which it is?  Money IS AN
object to consider here, I would like to get it back up with minimal cost.



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