Josh Saddler - Latest comments on Failing hardware part 2

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

Doug Goldstein [Visitor] — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:23:31 +0000

Just an FYI Josh, I know it's a little late but the issue with the grub screen being screwy isn't bad hardware at all. It was simply a bug with grub itself. emerge the current stable grub and run grub-install again on your MBR and your issues with that grub message should be resolved, that is if you still have the hardware.

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

R Robinson [Visitor] — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:34:00 +0000

I hope your new hardware has sorted your issues out.
If not then this guide was very useful to me...
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/articles/hardware-stability-p2.xml
At the least it's an excellent primer on pci latencies.

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

Branko Badrljica [Visitor] — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 05:28:44 +0000

Cap don't have to leak to be bad.

In fact, you can have bad cap that looks just fine.

Look for bowing of the top side of the cap.Even slight bowing is _bad_ .

Especially in the PSU ( take cover off- ofcourse with everything unplugged ).

Wrt to card cleaning: it doesn't seem to be issue here, but if you do clean connectors ( which is good thing to do ):

1. Go over them with hard pen rubber, which is a bit ahrder than pencil rubber and has a bit of glass powder in it.

2. Finish with alcohol on tissue paper. In absence of ethanol any strong bewerage is fine ( whiskey, cognac etc)

But seriously, you seem to have HW issue.
Don't just start blindly buying things, check them out first. Even if your graphic card is bad, it may very well be that it got killed by bad caps either in PSU, on board or even on the card itself.

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

Josh Saddler [Member] — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:02:17 +0000

Thanks for the responses. Grub is not the issue; as I think I stated in this entry or the other one, I've had a working grub with splashimage for two years now. Grub didn't suddenly start malfunctioning. Grub wouldn't have anything to do with random freezes once I'm doing work inside my desktop environment.

Wes:
It is a hardware problem, not a software issue. You must have missed the entirety of the posts that talked about how everything freezes while I'm working, not the corruption during boot.

And to fix your grub issue, just add the correct splashscreen location. It used to be installed in /boot, but now turns up in /usr/share/grub. Run emerge --config grub to copy it to the expected place in /boot. This behavior was added in a recent stable grub version.

Branko:
I already thought of that; all my caps are okay. Nothing leaking. Just as well, replacing the motherboard or PSU would have cost more than replacing the graphics card.

Pacho:
Yeah, I cleaned out my card as thoroughly as I could, as well as the entire inside of my machine. Didn't make any difference, aside from dropping temps about 5C. Which is nice, but didn't solve anything.

Loki and robbat2:
Interesting, but I already purchased my replacement card last night. Like Robin, I got my card from HIS; I went with a 4670.

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

robbat2 [Visitor] — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:27:12 +0000

Here's the card I put in my new workstation:

http://www.hisdigital.com/html/product_ov.php?id=368

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

Wes [Visitor] — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:17:06 +0000

I had this prob, when I tinkered with an install via the installer cd/dvd. Prob solved when I removed the splash screen ref in grub's menu.lst like psychon is suggesting above.. its not a hardware prob.

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

Roumano [Visitor] — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 12:15:44 +0000

I was the same problem 1 month ago (on 2 PCs).
I resolved the problem by remerge the grub & grub install

In response to: Failing hardware part 2

Pacho Ramos [Visitor] — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 10:32:42 +0000

Before replacing your graphics card, Have you tried to clean it? Sometimes, a lot of dust makes graphics cards behaves bad.

You can use a vacuum cleaner and a brush, but DON'T USE any air spray, because, they cause card to cool getting damp (because of condensation)

Good luck!