Mark Knecht <markkne...@gmail.com> writes: > Reseat memory and PCI cards, etc. Consider removing for a period of > time any hardware not absolutely necessary to debug the problem. (I.e. > - second video card, extra disk drives, extra network adapters, etc.) > Run memtest86 for a few days if you can spare the machine. Run > spinrite, etc., to look for drive problems. Open the box up and place > a fan blowing extra air for additional cooling.
That all sound fairly drastic... wouldn't any or all of those problems leave some kind of track? Something I can look for short of tearing up the whole machine? I have had the experience of breaking something in the hardware by handling it when I really didn't need to. An expensive video card I had ( a few yrs ago) comes to mind The fit was so close that dicking around with it I broke off a small piece with some bit of circuitry in it. Of course I had problems with getting a viewable screen so ended up soldering it back in... (the piece, not card to pci slot.. hehe) That fell apart again in the same place later on and I ended up using a piece of bailing wire to wire it in place. Surprisingly it worked for a long time that way. Another time... I took my wifes' computer apart (bad idea), ostensibly adding memory and somehow broke one of the clamps holding the heatsink and fan onto the cpu. It could flop around quite a bit... but it actually worked like that. Eventually I wired it down too... Lasted a year or so. But in both cases it was quite a bit of grief. Before I retired.. I was a field construction boilermaker (weldor and rigger). For most of my time in that trade, anything less than 1/2" steel plate was viewed as sheet metal.. Most of the work was 1" and up. I didn't develop a nice light touch .. needless to say.
