Hi,
I just returned from a 2 wk. vacation and when I left, I shut down the computer after getting my email
and because we get lightning storms here sometimes, I shut off the electric outlets to the computers.However, other than
the electricity going down for 1/2 Hr. (a regular occurrence here), my neighbors report no storms or lightning strikes.
I have a dual boot fairly new computer, Suse10.2 and Windows.
This is what happens now when I turn on the computer.
A small light on the monitor goes on and a message that "no signal is received."
Another indicator (light) that shows the hard disk is being used comes on and acts very much like it is
in an infinite loop; it doesn't stop searching full time for as long as I permit the computer to run.
Normally, a few small lights flash briefly as the keyboard is discovered and initialized. This does not
happen now.
These are the things I have tried:
1/start the computer, press F1,f2,DEL, ESC, to get into the bios
2 Since the indicators show that the cd/dvd drive and the A: drive would work, I tried to boot a kNOPPIX,
a live dvd Suse, a bootable disk with Linux small distros etc.....all these attempts were ignored, the hard drive
went merrily on it's way thrashing about.

3/ I cannot turn off the computer without turning off the power.
4/ I ruled out the monitor as the problem by plugging it into my laptop and it works fine.
Any thoughts ?
Matthew

> electricity going down for 1/2 Hr. (a regular occurrence here)
a power surge does not need a lightning strike

if you dont even get the bios POST displayed on your screen then something aint working right.
try removing everything appart from the cpu and see what happens when switching that box on
(when no memory is installed, it should beep a few times (or even continually)
if this is not the case i would guess your psu or your motherboard got a shot.
if it does work
slowly adding memory, graphics card, drives, other pci(-e/-X) cards until it fails again... that could lead you to the source of your problem

if the bios' POST is never shown and the screen stays in that mode, in no way will it be a booting or drive issue.

Thank you Nathanael,
Is it possible (or likely that I was the sole victim) for a power surge to have caused damage though I had the wall switches turned off and use a very good power surge protector? My neighbors report nothing similar.
drmjh

personally i doubt that, it is pretty unlikely!
but i would check all components in the computer are connected properly (you never know)
also if the psu is too weak or damaged, that could be cause of this problem

perhaps remove the surge protector and try another power socket, just in case.

if something should have been damaged, i would reckon it being either psu or motherboard.

if you dont get to the POST screen, then it is pretty clear that some hw is duff

I assume that all the other electrical applicances in the house are still working normally. It is possible that whatever happend was just due to you turning the computer on.

The "No Signal Received" is due to the fact the computer is not generating a video signal. The computer not booting (no blinking keyboard lights or beeps etc) could be due to several problems. The power supply could be bad even though the 12VDC power seems to be working i.e. the hard drive spins, Somthing on the motherboard went bad like a capacitor, Some other part went bad which is shorting out the power supply.

All other electrical appliances are working.

I'm assuming that psu means power supply unit.

Using another outlet, I plugged the computer directly into the wall socket. It started up, spun the disk, put on the front case light indicators and spun the fan. Can I assume from that, that the psu is working?
drmjh

Might try opening the case and clearing the cmos by opening the case and setting the jumper for 10 secs or so. the set jumper for normal cmos operation and try booting again. If you left your system unplugged its possible the cmos battery is dead and some settings got borked. That might be worth a try.

Actually, I thought about shorting out the cmos with a paper clip to see if it made any difference but I seem to recall from a very unpleasant experience a very long time ago, that I couldn't initialize (configure) the hard disk because I didn't have a record of its serial number and other Identification.
Have things changed any since then? Or will I have to supply the bios with information about the hard disk that might not be readily available?
drmjh

I have done it as a last resort a couple times before as a last resort and it worked. Not sure of the potential for borking things up.

Well, I shorted out the clearCmos solder points as instructed by the motherboard fabricator. No Joy.
I decided to take out the Cmos battery and replace it, figuring that I had nothing to lose and speculating that it might have been dead anyway. BTW, with the battery out, the machine tried to boot up, seemed to engage the hard disk (it spun it), much the same as always. So, I thought that a new battery might do the trick.
Alas, no joy here either.
From where I sit, (not very comfortable), that leaves the hard disk or the mother board.
I've decided to take the machine into a shop since I can't think of anything else to do at this point that might prove productive.
I'll let you all know what the final verdict is.
drmjh

Since my last post, this is what I've found out.
The M-board and the CPU are dead. There is no evidence of burning or scorching, and of course, the power
supply is intact, usually the 1st thing to take a hit from a power surge. The repair guy believes that the
M-board failed 1st and that the CPU fried secondary to this failure.
I now have a new M-board and new CPU (same models and types). I can see and open both HD's using knoppix
and I can open my data, so it's still intact.
But still no joy.
Here's what I'm up against now, though I think it's not serious, i'm puzzled as to my next step.
The machine boots up the bios and I accessed that and made sure that everything looked alright changing only
the 1st boot device to cd/dvd, 2nd to HDD:PM-st3200822A, my 200G hard drive. (there is a Sec. Dev. as slave,
HDD:PS-st3160023A 160G, physically designated as ('slave').
So far so good.
I then see the Linux GRUB and splash screen. However, regardless of what choice I make, I get the same

Err.Msg :

...loading reiserfs
resume device /dev/hda5 not found (ignoring)
waiting for device /dev/hda6 to appear not found
exiting to /bin/sh
...

My guess is that something has changed and the old OS can't see the hardisks?
Any help will be much appreciated.
matthew

I would post this in opensuse forums or use the suse recovery utility (at least i think it has one). Did the drive order get changed?

Thanks Hern_28
I don't think the drive order has changed.
I need to boot Suse to use the recovery utility...perhaps I can find one on knoppix?
matthew

Might want to check the drive partition information to make sure its not corrupted. Booting with the resume error when I was trying it out didn't cause a problem. Are the drive sata or regular IDE? If sata then might try sda6.

Otherwise back to initial remark make sure the partitions are setup the same as original, otherwise will need the new setup information to get it working. Just need to mount hda6 and make sure thats still the partition opensuse is on.

Also could goto the grub command line and use the find command (think help find or find file, don't remember for sure) and search for /vmlinuz and /boot/vmlinuz file and see if you can pick up the bootable partitions that way to make sure nothing has changed.

Well. the other shoe fell. I was continually unable to pull up the GUI Suse but could install (both safe and regular)from the Suse DVD. I always ended up at the command line and couldn't get KDE to initialize.
Suspecting that the larger of my 2 disks might have been dinged, I ran fsck and got a msg that the 2nd block couldn't be read and further scanning failed.
I assumed from this (perhaps wrongly?) that the large disk has at least one bad sector.
I started a new install but this time let Suse choose the site to install on. Sure enough, it ignored the large disk and went on to install on the smaller disk-successfully.
I mean piece by piece this computer rotted away while I was 3500 miles away and it was isolated from the power line. But given the number of times the clowns running this electricity service ESB, by name, snap the electricity off and on (and that's 240!)it's a wonder anything survives. Believe it or not, the electricity has been turned off and on 3 times in the past 15 days!

Matthew