STILL! Re: [GLLUG] desktop freezing??

Richard Houser rick at divinesymphony.net
Fri Dec 7 21:46:40 EST 2007


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Bring this in to a meeting.  Thermal paste or a patch of the phase
change heat transfer material is only good for one application.  Gather
a couple bags, a small roll of paper towels, a couple Q-tips, some
isopropyl alcohol, whatever tools you need to re-attach the heat sink
(normally just a regular screwdriver), and bring the machine into a
meeting.  Let me know a couple days in advance and I can bring in some
thermal transfer compound (Arctic Silver), check the heat sinks, and
remount them.  You can even hang out in the back if you like :).

Charles Ulrich wrote:
> One thing you can try that hasn't yet been suggested is reattaching
> the heat sink to the CPU. If this was done incorrectly, heat from the
> CPU won't be transferred effectively to the heat sink and the
> processor could be overheating. One way you can check if your CPU is
> overheating is by installing some software that monitors the various
> temperature sensors on your system. I use gkrellm, but there are
> countless others. Many newer motherboards can monitor various chips on
> the board as and ambient case temperature as well.
> 
> Charles
> 
> On Dec 7, 2007 8:30 AM, Benjamin Cathey
> <benjamincathey at catheycompany.com> wrote:
>> Well, I had it for a week with the cover off and it was fine.  The day after I put the cover on it froze - and again the next day.  I guess I can turn the variable speed fans up to high but that kind of defeats the purpose of having spent the money on switchable speed fans.  Like I said, my Proc has a Zalman Huge heatsink and a Fan that mounts above it (on a bracket that attaches to the card screws - it seemed fine before.  Maybe the video card is overheating?  It's a 512MB Nvidia GeForce - Nice card - actually has it's own power supply hook up.
>>
>> Either way I guess I can turn up the fans to high and see.  Can't really afford a new MB and Proc right now.
>>
>> Let me ask this though - If you swap MB, Proc and RAM to something newer - how does Linux handle this change if I just plug the old HDD back in?  Will it see everything as okay (Using Ubuntu?) -  It took forever to get the configuration right and the software installed and I don't really want to reinstall everything again.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Benjamin Cathey
>> System Administrator
>> Cathey Company
>> 4917 Tranter St.
>> Lansing, MI 48910 USA
>> Phone:     517.393.4720
>> Fax:       517.393.4225
>> Toll Free: 800.333.1972
>> "Service is Our Profession"
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: STeve Andre'
>> [mailto:andres at msu.edu]
>> To: linux-user at egr.msu.edu
>> Cc: Benjamin Cathey
>> [mailto:benjamincathey at catheycompany.com]
>> Sent: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:52:39
>> -0500
>> Subject: Re: STILL! Re: [GLLUG] desktop freezing??
>>
>>
>>
>>> ->> On Thursday 06 December 2007 19:37:05 Benjamin Cathey wrote:
>>> ->> > >->> Try posting copies of the complete /var/log/dmesg and the section of
>>> ->> > >->> /var/log/messages from about the last 10 minutes before the freeze
>>> ->> > > until ->> you shut it down or reboot.  If you have logins and things in
>>> ->> > > these ->> logs, you might want to blank out IPs, usernames, etc.  This
>>> ->> > > will end up ->> in public archives after all, so it's a good idea to
>>> ->> > > review them.
>>> ->> >
>>> ->> > I am not sure when it is happening or what to be looking for - everything
>>> ->> > seemed fine after the new power supply and now it is happening again.  The
>>> ->> > only thing I can figure is it MUST be overheating because it was running
>>> ->> > fine with the new power supply until I put the case cover back on.
>>> ->> >
>>> ->> > I turned the fans up to 'medium' speed - that SHOULD be enough.
>>> ->> >
>>> ->> > Where can I check to see if an overheat caused this??
>>> ->>
>>> ->> You are probably onto something.  I would run the computer for several
>>> ->> days with the cover off, to make sure that it is indeed a temperature
>>> ->> related problem.  If you can then see freezes after putting the cover
>>> ->> back on you'll have a good idea, but only if the computer is rock solid.
>>> ->> I'd use a week to determine this.
>>> ->>
>>> ->> If this is the case, you have a part which is partly OK.  As long as its
>>> ->> cold it's happy.  These things are a bitch to debug.  It might not even
>>> ->> be the motherboard, though I'd  bet that it is.  At this point I think I'd
>>> ->> try to find an identical motherboard and swap it out.  You can easily
>>> ->> spend 50 hours tracking something like this down.  An infra-red heat
>>> ->> imaging camera is useful for this.  I once had a friend who's company
>>> ->> had one and I got permission to take a problematic radio there, and
>>> ->> found that a tiny resistor in the receiver was getting too hot and
>>> ->> causing distortion.  If I hadn't had the camera it would have taken a
>>> ->> long tme to figure that out.
>>> ->>
>>> ->> Have you run something like memtest86 on the unit with the case on?
>>> ->> If it doesn't crash but finds errors that will say something.  If you're
>>> ->> running with multiple sodimms or whatever, try running with  just one.
>>> ->>
>>> ->> --STeve Andre'
>>> ->>
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