[Novalug] it stopped working (booting)

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

Peter has some good suggestions, but the fact that XP boots and that you 
get messages from Fedora means that things are getting past the BIOS. 
And a bad battery is likely to scramble the NVRAM settings, so that 
should be checked as well. And try reseating all the connectors too. And 
don't forget to defrag the Floating Point Unit. Just Kidding about that 
last one.

JIM

Peter Larsen wrote:
> Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> A year ago I inherited my mom's Compaq 1630NX.  I upgraded it to
>> a dual core x64 3800, bumped ram from 0.5 to 2.5 GB and added a disk.
>> More recently (a month ago) I added a PCI-E video card.  No other
>> HW changes since then.
>>
>> Been working fine with Windows XP (home) and my added OpenSuSE 10.2
>> and Fedora 8.  At least until last evening.  Now neither linux, nor
>> their "failsafe" modes, nor two live CD's I've tried will boot.
>> WinXP still does however.
>
> To me, boot means POST so it sounded to me like you had a hardware 
> issue. Given the age, I would still bet that's the case. If you can't 
> use a LIVE cd, or even a normal CD in recovery mode it sounds like 
> your computer is giving the OS inconsistent information.
> This may be as simple as a corrupt BIOS - or it may be worn out 
> components.
>
> You state that you're still able to boot into XP? It may be as simple 
> as XP cached the "detection" information and doesn't query the system 
> anymore. Linux does (part of the reason Linux can take a while to boot).
>
> I would also boot into the BIOS setup and watch the temperature 
> measurements. IF they're high that's definitely a symptom of hardware 
> that might have gone wrong. I've had systems where after a "rebuild" 
> cables were blocking the airflow and it would run hot. Make sure 
> things are running fine - and you may want to add an additional fan 
> while you're at it.
>
>> Here are the last 4 messages from a Fedora 8 boot.  It hangs thereafter.
>>
>>   ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:09.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
>>
>>   CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: 0000 0000 0000 0004
>>
>>   Bank 4: b200 0000 0007 0f0f
>>
>>   Kernel Panic - not syncing: cpu context corrupt
>
> To fix this, you may simple reset the BIOS nvram; remove "quick boot" 
> in the bios, and let the system re-discover everything. If that 
> doesn't help, your error message indicates a bad CPU. If the system 
> has overheated that would definitely be something that CAN happen. Get 
> some thermo-paste and re-set the CPU. Look for black burn marks. On my 
> last lost MOBO I had a big black "discoloration" where the CPU 
> overheating had made it's mark. That motherboard was lost.
>
>> OpenSuSE 10.2 puts up a splash screen that I can not escape quickly
>> enough to see the messages.  However the failsafe mode shows text
>> and ends with this line corresponding to the first line above.
>
> You should be able to change that in the bootloader (remove rgdb I 
> think is).
>
>>   PCI: In IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 0000:02:09.0.
>>   please try using pci=biosirq
>>
>> I tried the suggested boot option and it stopped at exactly the
>> same point.
>
> A bad bios could be a symptom of a bad bios battery. If the system is 
> new enough the bios setup screen would have a way of telling if the 
> battery is operational or not.
>
>> Do the messages suggest something specific to anyone?
>>
>> I'll break out my ultimate boot cd and run memtest86 overnight,
>> but this doesn't seem like memory does it?
>
> This doesn't look like it's a memory issue. I would check the heat and 
> bios as stated above. You may even try to do an XP install boot - I'm 
> pretty sure you'll see the same problem.
>
> Since you added hdd, memory and a bigger CPU - did you check if the 
> PSU can keep up? Some of the old Dell/Compaq/HP boxes that I saw for 
> Win98 wasn't equipted with enough PSU wattage to run with everything 
> equipted. If you JUST changed things within the last month that could 
> be it. Otherwise, it sounds like the OS retrieves different 
> information about what your system can do, than what's actually possible.
>
>
> Regards
>   Peter Larsen
>
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