At the meeting before last, I asked about a problem I'm having with the computer occasionally going to a black screen with no disk activity on reboot, right after the grub menu goes away. Overnight memtest showed no errors, I put a different vid card in, and still had the black screen problem. One of the things someone mentioned was to test the power supply. Recently, I had a few hard lockups and a couple of spontaneous reboots. So, how do I test my power supply, other than replacing it and seeing if the problem goes away? Or is that evidence enough to change it ASAP? According to lm-sensors, voltages are fine, and I've even sat and watched gkrellm for long periods of time - they look stable. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Greg
Gregory Avedissian wrote:
One of the things someone mentioned was to test the power supply. Recently, I had a few hard lockups and a couple of spontaneous reboots. So, how do I test my power supply, other than replacing it and seeing if the problem goes away? Or is that evidence enough to change it ASAP? According to lm-sensors, voltages are fine, and I've even sat and watched gkrellm for long periods of time - they look stable.
You can get a handheld tester (I have one at home, I can bring it to the next meeting). Basically if the light goes green it's good. Also, it has spots to check voltages of your power supply. Eric
On 10/30/07, Eric Martin <freak4uxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
You can get a handheld tester (I have one at home, I can bring it to the next meeting). Basically if the light goes green it's good. Also, it has spots to check voltages of your power supply.
I'm not sure that's adequate to tell if a PS is causing flaky behavior. I don't think it'll tell you if one of the voltage lines goes low under load or something. If it doesn't pass those tests, though, you'll know it's bad. Also, open the PS case and look for leaking capacitors. If you find any leakage, then you know you have a problem. I would just throw out the PS at that point, but you could probably replace the capacitors. -- Rich P.S.: I mean to post an update to my screen-blanking-while-watching-movies problem. I'll catch up with that later.
On 10/30/07, Eric Martin <freak4uxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
You can get a handheld tester (I have one at home, I can bring it to the next meeting). Basically if the light goes green it's good. Also, it has spots to check voltages of your power supply.
Richard Klein wrote:
I'm not sure that's adequate to tell if a PS is causing flaky behavior. I don't think it'll tell you if one of the voltage lines goes low under load or something. If it doesn't pass those tests, though, you'll know it's bad.
Also, open the PS case and look for leaking capacitors. If you find any leakage, then you know you have a problem. I would just throw out the PS at that point, but you could probably replace the capacitors.
Thanks. I went ahead and got a tester, and all appears normal. Nothing in the instructions say whether it puts a load on or not. I changed my video card, because the fan was making noise, and all reboots since then have been ok. No blank screens. Before, it was about 1/4 of the time. I did have one lockup since changing the vid card, and I think I read somewhere that it could be a result of using a realtime kernel. (someone correct me if I'm wrong.) I was doing a lot at once when it happened. Guess I have to experiment with it some more and look inside the psu. Greg
Folks asked for an update on this, so here it is. Original problem - Black screen on startup or reboot occurred about 25% of the time, right after the grub menu. No hard drive activity, no boot, no ssh. This problem has existed since I built the computer a year ago. Newer problem - Hard lockups, especially when the load was heavy. I first noticed this when I installed Gutsy on a spare partition. It also happened a few times in Etch, but I was using a custom realtime kernel when it happened. There were also a couple of spontaneous reboots. Hardware - ASUS M2V motherboard, Ath. X2 3800, Kingston RAM, Enermax PSU, some kind of GeForce 6200 with a fan that started getting noisy, Seagate drive, all about a year old. What I did - Replaced the vid card with a slightly older GeForce, and since then, the black screen has only occurred once or twice out of scores of reboots. Got a power supply tester, and the 5V rail read 5.4V one of the times I tested it. Contacted Enermax, and they told me to try a different power supply before I RMA'd mine. Got off the realtime kernel and went back to the stock Etch kernel. No more lockups in debian. Flashed the motherboard with the newest bios after reading that others were having lockup problems with this board. It didn't help. Got a new 350W SilverStone and put it in. Still getting lockups in Gutsy. I believe that the spontaneous reboots are a result of the relative placement of the power button and the wheeled leg of my office chair. I moved the computer back a few inches after I saw the two of them meet once. (Note for the interested builder - buttons on Coolermaster case stick out and require only a light touch. I just built a computer for a friend, and the buttons on the Antec case are recessed and not so easy to press in.) Put the Enermax back in, and everything seems to be fine as long as I stay away from Gutsy and the power button. Thanks again to everyone for their help. Greg
participants (3)
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Eric Martin -
Gregory Avedissian -
Richard Klein