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Subject: Re: offtopic: weird hardware problem?!

Author: Frank Phillips

Date: 01:55:58 09/06/03

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On September 06, 2003 at 04:11:18, Rick Bischoff wrote:

>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.

Try the mersene prime torture test for several hours.
http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

I do not reconginise the motherboard, but if it is a nfroce dual chipset thing
then they can be very sensitive to memory timings.  Run memtest overnight as
well.

Frank



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