I’m running Fedora 11 on my primary desktop. The mobo is a couple years old. Lately, it’s started randomly freezing, or occasionally shutting itself down without warning. I was going to run memtest on it, but I can’t even get into the BIOS to change the boot sequence. I hit “del” repeatedly during boot, but it ignores me and always goes to the hard drive. Does anyone have any suggestions (other than just upgrading the board, processor and memory, which I’m considering…)?
[Wednesday morning update]
For those asking, no, it is not a wireless keyboard.
And so far, I’ve had no problems since swapping the memory sticks.
Try temporarily unplugging the hard drive?
Simple solutions are usually the first choice. Have you checked power and/or cooling? In my experience, those with lockup problems most frequently have power supplies failing or overheating problems (pet hair at the top of this list).
Also, you can try a new button battery on the mobo, and jumpering the BIOS reset pins. Unplug the hard drive, it might look for the CD drive next. You can use a bootable CD like BART-PE then to see if there’s a hardware failure.
I had a similar problem a few months ago. My comp is old and has a single gig of mem in two banks. I pulled them one at a time and found that one of the banks was indeed the problem.
The machine was able to boot and run just fine on 512K. So well in fact I have not replaced the bad 512 as of yet, though today I looked at Amazon and found that what I need is only $25 from Kingston.
I would not be surprised that if you try this that you need to keep the first memory slot filled so when you remove the memory from that slot fill it with memory from another.
Have you checked power and/or cooling?
No, but just swapped out the memory sticks. I’ll see if that does anything.
I also did note that if I boot sans hard drive, it does look to the CD player. The only problem is that the drive drawer won’t open…
This is the idiot check, but are you sure it’s del to get into your bios? It isn’t always the same, and I’m use to it being an f key. I’m assuming you chose del b/c that’s what the bios tells you while it is post-ing . . .
Yes, it says to hit del for setup and tab for POST messages. Neither works.
I have an old cd-r drive that the draw doesn’t open on. I keep a straightened paper clip on top of the tower so I can use the manual release to open it when I need to. There should be a tiny little hole in the front of the player that you can shove a paper clip down into and force the cd drawer open. That will shove the draw out far enough where you can grab it with the tips of your fingers and pull it out manually. It’s designed to do this so it doesn’t hurt the drive. Easy way to get a disc out of a powered down/unplugged system too.
I also did note that if I boot sans hard drive, it does look to the CD player. The only problem is that the drive drawer won’t open…
As Dave G suggested, check your power supply — you’ll probably have to swap it for one you know is good. If your P/S is failing but not quite dead yet, you’ll see it first in the drives because they suck up so much juice.
I’ll also add that if it a bad motherboard you will probably be able to tell by visual inspection. Look at the capacitors and if any are bulging and or leaking then it is obviously time to replace the board.
Another problem that happens quite often is that over time you will have what is called “socket creep”. Thermal cycling will slowly push processors, memory, and expansion cards out of their sockets/slots and cause a poor connection to the rest of the system bus. I’d pull everything out and re-seat all your components to make certain they are fully attached.
If you have any expansion cards or usb devices I’d leave all those things unplugged and just run the system as bare bones as possible to eliminate as many factors as possible. If you can get into the BIOS then start turning off sound controllers, ethernet controllers, system and bios caches. Some BIOS’s will even have a fail safe mode that will do all this for you.
Also a good time to blow everything out with a compressed air canister.
If you want to play electrician for the day you can test the power supply with a multimeter
Or, just go to Fry’s or Radioshack and buy a power supply tester.
First things first. Let’s rule out any OS problems. Run the following from the command line;
simburg-box$ cat /var/log/messages
simburg-box$ cat /var/log/kern.log
simburg-box$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
These may vary with your distribution…not sure. Go with your instinct. In any case, you can share these messages here: http://fedoraforum.org/
Just describe your problem and include your log outputs. If nobody can help you there, then you might be looking at a hardware issue.
I agree with the suggestions of checking the power supply. You can often notice if it is clogged by listening to the fan noise. I once had a similar issue and after opening the power supply (disconnected of course) and cleaning it up the computer ran fine again.
Alternatively it can be a whole other number of issues from failing memory, to a failed motherboard, to a failing CPU (although this one never happened to me). It can also happen that your CPU cooling fan or heatsink is not properly seated or clogged up. A nice vacuuming of the PC might be in order.
First things first. Let’s rule out any OS problems.
Of the first things, hardware is the firstest. Make sure you’re getting power and make sure everything’s plugged in and seated properly. What Rand’s describing, particularly the BIOS issue, sounds like a hardware failure somewhere. Either the hardware’s heating up too fast and too much or something’s not getting enough juice.
I agree with the suggestions of checking the power supply. You can often notice if it is clogged by listening to the fan noise.
Or if there’s no fan noise at all. Another thing that can happen is the P/S fan can die and you’ll see the same sort of weird things that happen when dust causes overheating.
If you are using a wireless or USB keyboard, try using a ps2 keyboard. Older bioses don’t always see USB
Just a shot in the dark, but is it a wireless keyboard? I’ve sometimes had trouble getting my boxes to go into setup when I’m using a wireless keyboard–something about them not getting initialized properly until later in the boot sequence. Sometimes I have to plug in a different keyboard in order to get into BIOS setup.
I’m having the exact same symptoms with F12. I was about to swap out memory myself, but seeing multiple reports tells me that the problem may be in the distro.
And so far, I’ve had no problems since swapping the memory sticks.
You can get into BIOS now?
I’m having the exact same symptoms with F12. I was about to swap out memory myself, but seeing multiple reports tells me that the problem may be in the distro.
See question above — having trouble getting into BIOS would have nothing to do with the O/S. OTOH, RAM incompatibility could cause the O/S to act flaky.
You can get into BIOS now?
No, that’s still a problem, but at least I haven’t had any glitches that would require me to.
No, that’s still a problem, but at least I haven’t had any glitches that would require me to.
Not good. I’d strongly re-recommend checking your P/S.
Replace your CMOS battery, and try to update the bios. If you can do that, your mobo is probably OK
IF you can boot from the CD drive, try booting from a recent live CD distribution and see if there’s any problems with it. They’re really useful for telling the difference between hardware problems and software problems.
Huh. I bet your keyboard is USB. I bet if you plug in a PS/2 keyboard, you can get into the BIOS.
I bet your keyboard is USB.
You lose. I have a USB mouse, but my KB is PS/2. 😉