[mythtv-users] Tricky to diagnose hardware problem

[Damian]

On 02/06/2012 12:09, George Galt wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 6:45 AM, Damian<myth at surr.co.uk>  wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>>
>> I have just found out that there was a power surge in my area a couple of
>> weeks ago. That must have been what broke my Uninterruptable Power Supply
>> and the internal PSU of one of my machines. I'll be putting in a claim for
>> those.
>>
>>
>> There is a remaining problem that I can't get to the bottom of. With each
>> clean OS install (I did 3 or 4 in my attempt to get back to a fully
>> functioning system after a broken partial upgrade that happened a few days
>> before this power surge), I get occasional popups saying things like:
>>
>>
>> Ubuntu 12.04 has encountered an internal problem. Please reboot if this
>> persists.
>>
>>
>> I have run Memtest overnight which didn't find any problems. I checked the
>> hard drives and have run burnK7 (although I didn't run it for more than
>> about 10 minutes because I didn't want to damage anything)
>>
>>
>> All of these tests seem fine. BurnK7 didn't return anything, so should I
>> assume that is fine?
>>
>>
>> Maybe there's a problem with the motherboard or something. How could I
>> diagnose that?
>>
>>
>> One more clue is that rebooting occasionally hangs, very early in the boot
>> process. The last thing on screen when it hangs is something about ACPI
>> (that's probably the wrong acronym, but it's something like that). This
>> probably happens about 1 in 10.
>>
>>
>> Any ideas what I should do, or should I take the machine somewhere to be
>> repaired?
>>
>>
>> Damian
>>
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>
> Unless you were running a UPS (and possibly, even if you were), I'd
> suspect the power supply.  If you have a spare around, or can borrow
> one from another machine, I'd try swapping out the current one and
> seeing if that fixed the problem.  Power supply issues can show up in
> strange ways.  I had one show up as an occasional glitch in the USB
> bus.
>
> George

Hi George,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I was unclear in my original post. The machine in question was running a 
USP, and both the USP and the machine's power supply were killed by the 
power surge. I have no idea how my other machine survived, but people 
all over our small town are getting damaged pieces of equipment replaced 
by the electricity company.

This all happened a couple of weeks ago, but I've only just heard about 
the power surge and putting in a claim. In the mean time, I have 
replaced the PSU with a brand new one.

I guess there's a change that the new power supply is faulty, but I 
would have thought that unlikely.

Unfortunately, this 'internal error' message that pops up is very 
irregular. It could not show for a day or two, then maybe 5 or 6 times 
in a day.

I was kind of ignoring it, and nothing seems to get affected by the 
random glitches. However, if I'm entitled to get any damaged items 
replaced, I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

Any more ideas?
Damian