[mythtv-users] System freezes on boot - Need advice

Ian Clark mrrooster at gmail.com
Wed Jun 4 19:02:41 UTC 2008


2008/6/4 Craig Huff <huffcslists at gmail.com>:

> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:50 PM, steve <sfreilly at roadrunner.com> wrote:
> >
> > you probably already checked this, but, anything interesting in the
> > messages or boot log?
> >
> It is worth a check tonight, but I wouldn't expect anything since, by
> the time the system is booting, everything is always working fine.


Just to second what's already been said, deffo sounds like a HD dying, but
it might be PSU?

How light is your PSU? (Light psu == bad psu)

Have you changed the cables? or do they just look ok? Is the motherboard
properly secured? (I had an intermittant fault on a PC a few years ago where
the mobo was only screwed in with 1 screw, it moved ever so slightly as it
heated and randomly crashed; although that would probably be more
intermittant.)

does it work better if the drive is warm? (ie, is the grease on the bearings
stopping it spinning up reliably?) mind you it's a new drive so probably
not.

Are all the pins ok on the mobo connector? is there any fluff on either of
the connectors? Does it work better if you swap the PATA drives around? Have
you tried a PATA/SATA adaptor (incase it's the IDE interface?)

I'd deffo check the PSU too, if it is a cheap one it's worth replacing
anyway. Over the 10-15 years I've been messing around with PCs, other than
the odd HD failure the only real issues I've had have been with cheap PSUs,
and when they go they can take things with them.

[snip]
>
> At least I have dumps of /, /boot, and /var now.  I ran into problems
> trying to get the .mpg files to tape.  I don't know if I'll be able to
> make the time to tar subsets up that will fit on single tapes and spin
> them out to my DLT drive.
>

As an aside if you don't mind fiddling, bacula is worth a look, once you get
it set up it's quite a competent backup solution. (and it's free. :) )
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20080604/174bccf6/attachment.htm 


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list