Zeppo Postmortem
A computer I built two years ago with lots of help from you guys (and finally a computer specialist in town) has been dead for a couple of months. I think I've resolved it to a problem in the motherboard. I'd like to hear what you think about it, particularly if you think the problem might be with CPU or memory instead.
Possible Cause
When this started, Zane had just learned to crawl and had gained a fascination with the power switch on the surge protectors. Eventually, I cleared enough time to rearrange things so he can't reach the surge protector, but there were a set of odd reboots before that happened.
Initial Problem
The computer started to reboot during the bootup process with gradually increasing regularity. Eventually, it got to where it never finished the bootup, and I tried to reinstall the OS, and then I encountered the main symptoms.
The Symptoms
1. When writing to the hard drive, the computer sometimes freezes. I've used three different hard drives, all of which were confirmed working either just before or just after on another machine. I've had this problem while installing FC2, FC5 and Windows XP. The same FC 5 CDs performed a perfect install on another machine right afterwards.
2. When reading from the CD drive, the computer sometimes fails to pick up a sector. Among other tests, I tried using the media check on the FC 5 installation disks. The media check fails on this computer, but works on other computers. In other words, we're talking about the same software on the same CD checking the same CD in the same CD-ROM drive on a different computer. On this computer, it always fails.
Diagnosis
As I said, I think it's a problem with the motherboard.
Possible Cause
When this started, Zane had just learned to crawl and had gained a fascination with the power switch on the surge protectors. Eventually, I cleared enough time to rearrange things so he can't reach the surge protector, but there were a set of odd reboots before that happened.
Initial Problem
The computer started to reboot during the bootup process with gradually increasing regularity. Eventually, it got to where it never finished the bootup, and I tried to reinstall the OS, and then I encountered the main symptoms.
The Symptoms
1. When writing to the hard drive, the computer sometimes freezes. I've used three different hard drives, all of which were confirmed working either just before or just after on another machine. I've had this problem while installing FC2, FC5 and Windows XP. The same FC 5 CDs performed a perfect install on another machine right afterwards.
2. When reading from the CD drive, the computer sometimes fails to pick up a sector. Among other tests, I tried using the media check on the FC 5 installation disks. The media check fails on this computer, but works on other computers. In other words, we're talking about the same software on the same CD checking the same CD in the same CD-ROM drive on a different computer. On this computer, it always fails.
Diagnosis
As I said, I think it's a problem with the motherboard.