Re: [PLUG] Laptop Hardware Troubles?

[cshanahan@comcast.net]

> cshanahan@comcast.net said:
> > This afternoon I picked up a new hard drive and installed it. Put a copy
> > of WinXP
> > Pro in the CD-ROM and restarted the machine. After a few minutes of
> > formatting
> > the machine crashed as it has been doing. With that in mind, the problem
> > doesn't appear to be with the hard drive.
> >
> 
> It's an outside shot but if not the hard drive, maybe RAM? From the
> Knoppix site, "What are the minimum system requirements?... 20 MB of RAM
> for text mode, at least 96 MB for graphics mode with KDE (at least 128 MB
> of RAM is recommended to use the various office products)..."

Yeah. RAM is one place I always spend money. The machine has 1Gb of RAM.
I also have one of the original 256Mb RAM DIMMs that came with the machine.
I tried that just to be sure it wasn't bad RAM. No go!  <sigh>

> You should be able to pull the chip and go into test mode and try to write
> to the disk.  If it works you get off cheap.  If not, it's probably the
> CPU.

The laptop seems to shut itself off when it gets too hot; almost as if the fans
aren't cooling the laptop well enough. Its a PIV, not a Centrino, so it tends to
get quite hot. So far the problem seems to be associated with heat. The laptop
crashes (shuts itself off) each time I try to write to the hard drive for a few
minutes or longer, such as with an OS install --or using dd to wipe a drive. With
that in mind I'm back to square one, where to get help. I have NO experience
with laptop repairs --the actual hardware. They are not quite like PCs.

Thanks though.

Chris Shanahan

BTW -- Jon, if you don't mind could you e-mail me privately. I would like to talk
to you about another matter and I don't want to SPAM you.

> Jon
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