Hardware lockup - need suggestions for diagnosing

[Dan Miller]

For gentoo it would be gentoo-nofb (no frame buffer), other live cds,
should give you options to choose a kernel, there should be one similar
to no frame buffer or a run level 2 or 3.

So far everything is pointing to a complete failure. If this doesn't
work, find a local recycling center and give them a donation.

Dan

Larry Cook wrote:
> Dan, Ben, Ric, and others that replied directly,
> 
> Thanks for your replies and suggestions.  Here's is what I've done and
> know so far:
> 
> Hard drive - I removed the hard drive and disabled it in the BIOS. Still
> have the problem.  (And yes Ben, I've already backed up the user data. 
> Thanks for asking.)
> 
> Disable things in BIOS - I disabled the few things that the BIOS lets me
> disable: power management, legacy usb, minipci, serial port, auto-wake,
> and a few other things I don't recall.  Still have the problem.
> 
> Memory DIMMs - I tried with only one DIMM and even tried a DIMM from
> another DELL Latitude laptop that has not had any problems.  Still have
> the problem.
> 
> Video - Dan suggested using a Live CD and just trying the console.  How
> do I do that?
> 
> External warming - Not sure how to do this other than light a fire in
> the fireplace, but that might tempt me to throw in the laptop! :-)
> 
> Reset connectors, etc. - Haven't tried this yet.
> 
> eBay - I did a quick check and found a dozen or more of this model, both
> fully working and partial systems.
> 
> Memtest86/86+ - (Ben, thanks for the links.)  This is last since this is
> what I spent most of my time on.  Both versions of memtest behaved the
> same.  When the system is stone cold (off over night), memtest does not
> finish writing it's initial text to the screen before it locks up. After
> it's been left sitting for 15-20 minutes I power off and then on and
> memtest finishes writing all the text, but the elapsed time never
> increments, although in some cases test #0 did update with a non-zero
> percent complete.  After it's been on a while longer and I power off and
> then on it eventually gets to test #5 [block move] and hangs.  This
> consistently happened if I let the tests run w/o intervention.  If I hit
> 'c' and run tests #6, #7 and #8, they all pass.  I even let test #6 run
> for 32+ passes as the web page says is needed to hit all patterns.  The
> one interesting thing is that after running test #6, I hit 'c' and
> selected test #5 and that ran multiple passes w/o a problem.  But if I
> power off and on the computer hangs on test #5.  This was pretty
> repeatable.
> 
> Does any of this memtest behavior indicate any specific component?  Or
> do others have additional suggestions?
> 
> If I can't solve this, I'll be going the eBay route.
> 
> Thanks,
> Larry
> 
> 
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