[ILUG] A frustrating system (hardware?) failure: any tips on how to resolve

[Michael Conry]

Thanks for the reply...I follow up below...
On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 1:50 PM, FRLinux <frlinux at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Michael Conry <michael.conry at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Apologies for the long mail, hopefully someone has some time and
>> insight to share on a gloomy Sunday!
>
> I wouldn't be on hardware failure just yet. Could you list the
> proprietary drivers you applied and the bits and pieces in your PC
> (homemade or branded?).
The system is homebuilt, probably at least 4 years ago (I moved back
to Ireland 2.5 years ago and it wasn't new then).  I've basically run
it non-stop for all of that time, without any crash until now.  It was
running Ubuntu 8.04 until recently, and before that something like 6.1
(I'd have to check).

The bits and pieces:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M61P-S3
Memory: Kingston Value KVR667D2N5K2/2G  (2 kits of 2x1Gb, bought at
different times, first one set, few months later second set).
CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (original cooler)
LAN: onboard gigabit, plus additional dlink card (forget the model)
Graphics: Onboard GeForce 6100 nforce 430
Additional Graphics: GeForce 8400 GS
PSU: Corsair vx450W (second power supply, first one failed about a
year and a half ago)

The only proprietary driver I use is the nvidia one.  This is what I
would have been using before my upgrade.  Following the upgrade, I
don't know what would have been in use (i.e. whether ubuntu upgraded
that too).
However, I also got crashes on the debian installation, and I am
certain in that case that there is no nVidia driver except for the
standard nv driver from xorg.

> Also, just to make sure, would run a memory
> check from the Ubuntu install CD (or any other you might have handy).
The last item in the grub menu is memtest, and I ran that for about an
hour and a half (enough time to finish one and a quarter passes
through it).  No errors detected.  I know that is a shortish test, but
I reasoned that in practice the problems showed up fairly quickly, so
thought the test might reveal something in that time.
Is there an advantage to running it from the Install CD?

Michael