Hi Roger,
On Mon, 2011-10-10 at 20:41 +0100, Roger Munford wrote:
> Lisi,
>
> The computer just crashes occasionally. The screen goes blank and the
> sound changes slightly to a continuous whine. Whether it comes from the
> fans or disk, I do not know.
It's not unusual for a fan to cause symptoms like that, though I think
that's mostly with overheating.
A check you could do is to open the box and when the noise starts, try
stalling each fan to see if the noise stops. If it does, then it may
well be worth replacing that fan. A finger on the hub will stall them. A
finger in the blades is usually not too painful. If in doubt, try one of
those soft white pencil erasers.
Hmm, no, not the ones for soft white pencils :-)
The usual problem I've had replacing motherboards is that they then also
need a CPU and a cooler and some new memory and by then a lot of the
machine is renewed and maybe I might as well finish the job. The last
time I faced that choice, I ended up building a complete fanless ITX
machine as my home (headless) fileserver. About 12W consumption IIRC.
I've never had a serious problem with Linux on a motherboard from
Novatech. I have a laptop with an odd WiFi controller that stays low-ish
Tx power but it still works OK, but that's all I can think of off-hand.
By way of balance, I sometimes run Win7 on that same laptop and it
_persistently_ drops the blooming WiFi and needs a
disconnect->reconnect->troubleshoot to get it working.
A number of the guys at Novatech run Linux and, whilst Novatech "don't
support Linux", they can often be quite helpful. They always first give
the party line, but once they believe you're competent, they'll often
give useful hints about the hardware.
Kind regards,
Gordon.
--
Gordon Scott www.gscott.co.uk
01256-476547
0794-1958207
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