Author: Luke Stutters Date: To: adam.trickett, Hampshire LUG Discussion List CC: Subject: Re: [Hampshire] [Hardware] random system freezes
Adam Trickett wrote: > Hi,
>
> A friend had a PC that would freeze at random intervals. It didn't matter if
> it was running Windows or Linux, of it was it his house or mine. Eventually
> he got really annoyed and bought one from Jamie's in Southampton to replace
> it. After they had built and tested it, they popped his old 80Gb disk in and
> sent him home.
>
> Today I showed him how to mount the old drive from ubuntu, and within 10
> minutes the machine started to play up, locking up and not rebooting
> properly.
>
> Is it possible that a duff Maxtor IDE drive could be the root of all his
> problems? On another day when it's not getting late we plan to remove the
> 80Gb drive and see if it's stable.
Ignoring bus and cable issues, if the HD was doing something funny to
the 5/12V supply and the motherboard couldn't compensate, it could throw
the machine off. It might be interesting to hook a multimeter up to it
and see what it was drawing.
