H,i everyone. I'm experiencing screen freezes/lock-ups more than occasionally when I'm extracting video file for burning onto a blank DVD and or when I'm restoring my systems via .tgz archive files. These problems seem to have stemmed over the past 3 months for some reason. I thought it might be defective memory, but I ran Memtest yesterdasy for 9 hours and it returned no errors. Any ideas as to what might be causing the problem. The problem only seems to occur when I carry out the two above-described tasks - the rest of the time everything works fine on both my Linux distros. Any ideas where to troubleshoot next? My own view now is that the problem is linked to the power supply starting to fail. Cheers, David
Make sure you're running DMA on all devices. Otherwise, if you're using PIO, it will cripple your system performance by flooding the system buss. Code: /sbin/hdparm -i /dev/hd* ... assuming you have IDE devices and that you have the privileges to run hdparm. Please post the results.
Hi, AT Here's the output and thanks for replying: Code: Password: root@Home:/home/david# UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 bash: UDMA: command not found root@Home:/home/david# AdvancedPM=no root@Home:/home/david# Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-4 ATA/ATAPI-5 ATA/ATAPI-6 ATA/ATAPI-7 bash: Drive: command not found root@Home:/home/david# root@Home:/home/david# * signifies the current active mode bash: David Hardcastle: command not found root@Home:/home/david# root@Home:/home/david# root@Home:/home/david# /dev/hdd: bash: /dev/hdd:: No such file or directory root@Home:/home/david# root@Home:/home/david# Model=LITE-ON LTR-40125W, FwRev=WS05, SerialNo= bash: LTR-40125W,: command not found root@Home:/home/david# Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic } bash: =5Mbs: No such file or directory root@Home:/home/david# RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0 root@Home:/home/david# BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0 root@Home:/home/david# (maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0 bash: syntax error near unexpected token `:' root@Home:/home/david# IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:227,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} root@Home:/home/david# PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 bash: PIO: command not found root@Home:/home/david# DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 bash: DMA: command not found root@Home:/home/david# UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 bash: UDMA: command not found root@Home:/home/david# AdvancedPM=no root@Home:/home/david# root@Home:/home/david# * signifies the current active mode bash: David Hardcastle: command not found root@Home:/home/david# root@Home:/home/david# root@Home:/home/david#
Whatever you posted there, you did something wrong executing the command I suggested; it looks like you pasted the output into a terminal. :O That said, I think I've gleaned enough info from that to determine that you are using UDMA2 on both of the devices listed. That's the best that a 40-conductor ribbon cable can do, so you're in OK shape there. Well, since DMA doesn't seem to be the problem, things can slow down if you try to use a lot more RAM than you actually have, and a dying PSU can cause all kinds of problems for your system (not the least of which is frying all the rest of your hardware). Also, I see that you're using Maxtor HDDs... those can be bad news also, so if you have a dying HDD, it can cause hiccups also.
Okay, I just retyped the command and this is what it produced: /dev/hdd: Model=LITE-ON LTR-40125W, FwRev=WS05, SerialNo= Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic } RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0 (maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0 IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:227,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 AdvancedPM=no * signifies the current active mode I'm starting to think it's a harware failure of some kind, so thanks for the input. On another tack, I tried (several times) a few weeks back, to try to install XP on my first HD, but I just kept getting BSOD during the setup - that made me think something was wrong - curiousely though, Linux loads on both drives - no problem. However, I'll try to find some way of testing the PSU. As for the rest of the hardware 'geting fried', well that's bad news! The PC's quiet old now, so I guess it might be getting near it's end. David.
