[ale] OT - hardware problem

Calvin Harrigan charriglists at bellsouth.net
Mon Oct 11 09:36:20 EDT 2010


On 10/11/2010 1:07 AM, Joe Knapka wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm trying to diagnose a problem with a friend's machine.  It powers
> off randomly, usually early in the XP boot process, but usually after
> the "Windows XP" cylon-eye load screen is running. I tried running an
> Ubuntu live CD on it, and it booted all the way to the desktop and let
> me surf the web for about 10 minutes, then spontaneously powered down.
>
> Aha, thinks I, it's probably a power-supply problem. So I replaced the
> PS, but the behavior did not change.
>
> It is likely to be a motherboard issue?  Or is there other stuff I
> ought to check first?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -- JK
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I would lean towards the MB only because bad memory generally manifests 
itself as system freezes or spontaneous reboots.  In the 20+ years of 
dealing with PCs, I've only come across at most 1 bad processor.  But 
memory checks are cheap/free so if the bootable CD has memcheck on it, 
give a try.


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