[LAU] Hard lock-ups plus MOTU UltrLite Mk3

Darren Landrum darren.landrum at sbcglobal.net
Sat May 23 22:42:23 EDT 2009


Overheating CPU? That's a thought.

Well, I guess my system is a year old and could use a bit of an 
overhaul. Thank you very much for the help!

-- Darren


James Cameron wrote:
> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 09:50:45PM -0400, Darren Landrum wrote:
>> Well, I decided to run memtest86, and it locked up during the test.
> 
> Ah, good, that reduces the component set to something quite smaller.
> The things I would consider as cause for that are:
> 
> 1.  dust in the CPU cooling fins, (I take my systems outside and run a
> vacuum cleaning in reverse, with a thin nozzle, and play the air stream
> over the various parts of the heatsink),
> 
> 2.  non-rotation or slow rotation of the cooling fans, (if the system
> has a BIOS sensor display, check that it shows a reasonable rotation of
> the fan, typical rotation rates are from 1000 to 3000 RPM, in my
> experience, and is fixable by replacing the fan, or cleaning it)
> 
> 3.  drying out of the thermal conducting grease between the CPU and the
> heatsink, (I recently had to remove and reapply the grease on a Pentium
> 4 3GHz desktop at home, symptom was CPU temperature consistently high
> and random power downs),
> 
> 4.  failing power supply, (I unplug non-essential devices temporarily,
> such as hard drive, to lower the average power draw, and see if the
> memtest symptom goes away ... I also check the power supply voltages
> with a meter),
> 
> 5.  corrosion or other damage to the memory DIMM socket or module, (I
> wiggle the DIMMs during a memtest, with about the equivalent of up to
> 200 gram force ... if the memtest result changes in a cycle with my
> wiggling, I know there's damage),
> 
> 6.  a specific memory DIMM failed, (remove it, see if memtest
> completes).
> 
> Oh, and above all remember to use anti-static procedures, and try not to
> unplug or replug things inside the unit while the power is on.
> 
> Static discharge damage is particularly annoying because it typically
> happens months after the static discharge happens.  The discharge causes
> damage which then takes a long time before it begins to make the
> component fail.
> 
> So "it works after I zapped it" isn't a reliable method of proving no
> damage was done.
> 




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