About a two weeks ago I decided to switch from XP to Linux on my desktop as it was so bloated with stuff that it needed to be reformatted and I couldn't find my install disk. After several days or research I decided on this version of Linux. I also decided to totally get rid of XP off that system since it wasn't worth saving. The problem that I can't seem to fix is that after a while the screen will turn off, blink with some sort of colored static, turn off again and then come back up. Thing is you can not navigate after this happens (mouse doesn't work and you can't tab around). The only option that seems to be left is to hit the reset button and boot back up. Up to the point that it freezes the system works fine. I thought it might be the ATI video card causing the problems but I've installed the latest driver but that doesn't seem to have any effect. The time it takes for the system to lock up varies between about 30min up to about 2 hours. I've been trying to figure out how to fix this for the last week but what little knowledge I have of operating systems is from the windows world. I would have switched to a different Linux to see if it was Mandrake causing the problem but for some reason i can't get the setup disks to work but that is a different issue. So if anyone knows what the problem is (besides the operator ) or even can point me in the direction I need to go I would appreciate it.

It's a blindshot but I also had lockup problems and adding noapic nolapic to the kernel boot options solved the issue for me.
To try this fix, do the following: go to Configure your computer -> Boot -> Set up how the system boots. In there, if you see a pair of checkboxes for the APIC click on them then next all the way to the end. If you don't, click on next, in that screen select the usual boot option you use (default is linux and click on modify to the right of the screen. In the append line add noapic nolapic, click on ok then finish and reboot. Hopefully it'll help you like it helped me

That didn't work. That actually made the system not want to boot in normal Linux. With those settings, I have to go through failsafe and then <ctlr>+D in for normal linux. I'm still open to suggestions.

In command line (console) as ROOT, type drakconf, and in there you can configure some settings - see if anything in there can help you?

Regards,
Shelton.

There's also the brute force whay to reconfigure your boot config. Edit /etc/lilo.conf, and add those to the "append=" line. Rerun lilo when you finish.

Tobin

Sorry about the delay on the reply, I didn't get to try anything yesterday do to job commitments. The drakconf just takes me to the config system area and I've already been over that, but that is a neat little trick. Tobin: could you give a little (ok a lot) more detail? I'm new at all this Linux system stuff and that just went well over my head. I mean, I know that is console stuff but beyond that I'm lost.

More info time: After work this afternoon thinking it might be the video card I swapped it out with an old voodoo3 card I have. The system booted fine after some tweaking for the new, er, old video card. After about ten minutes the computer started beeping (well a long continuous tone for about 30sec). This wasn't from the speakers but from the actual small speaker in the case. I also noticed that when it was beeping that the hard drive light was blinking. When the tone went away the hard drive light was on continuous. It then locked up about thirty minutes later. Question: Given that the reason I switch to Linux was the XP system was failing could my problem be a failing hard drive? The hard drive in this computer is probably the oldest component for the entire system. I can't remember when I got them but it has to be going on eight years now. This particular hard drive has been shipped three times across the Atlantic by boat and moved about half dozen times from one apartment to another. I'm not excited about going and buying another component for this computer but I do know that all electronic devices have a life span and I know hard drives fail. So what do you think, could all this add up to a failing hard drive, the video problems the screen locking up, the hard drive light and beeping noises?


BTW everyone that has posted something here, Thanks

This is maybe not the best answer, but I had similar problem with IBM laptop. Computer freezed quite often, during boot or later. This was with Mandriva 10.1, but this behaviour has not appeared since I switched to Mandriva 10.2 (or 2005). I think you should give newer version a try at least, upgrade itself should be simple.

Mandrake 10.2 huh. Got any links to ISOs (I'll search tomorow, it to late for me to search now)? I tried to switch to a couple other distros to see if the problem was Mandrake but I could never get them to boot, my computer just kept going into Mandrake. I figured I really didn't need to solve that problem until much further down the road. Besides, there is just to many people recomending this distro for newbies to just give up on it right yet.

Ok, I downloaded the boot.iso for 2006 and tried that. I put it in my primary CD rom which is set to the first boot chose in BIOS. The computer went straight into Mandrake 10.1. I've had this same problem with two other distros. If I put the Mandrake 10.1 CD in it will got to setup on reboot.

DouglasEsh

Just had time to read your previous posts - with the beeping sounds, it definitely sounds like there is something with your hardware - it could be anything, from Harddrive to RAM, to motherboard - anything! - How old is your computer? It sounds like it s on its last legs, can u afford to buy a new one, I mean a basic office type one?

regards
Shelton.

Personally I think this is a little overkill. If there is something wrong with one part of hardware, it doesn't necessarily mean there is anything else wrong with the other parts. Many system will last many many years with only specific components having to be replaced.

To the original poster. If you want to check on the hardware of your system, there are two good tests to run. First would be to check the RAM since that tends to be the most common failure in computers. The way to do this is to get memtest86 and get either the bootable floppy or cd version depending on what your system has. It will test your ram for errors. Let the test run about twice all the way through... it will probably take an hour or so.

A second good test is a harddrive diagnostic utility. For this, you'll need to know the BRAND NAME and possible the MODEL of your harddrive. That means it's time to start searching through old papers or open up the system and look at the harddrive (the latter is usually faster). Once finished, go to the manufacturer website and try to download the diagnostic utility for your drive. This USUALLY requires a floppy drive just to let you know. Once again, you'll have to boot with it. These diagnostics vary slightly from manufacturer to manufacturer so I may not be able to help you out with specific directions on which options to pick.

This is VERY strange behavior. Are you absolutely certain the boot order is set up this way, because if so, it's very unusual for a computer to mess the order up like you've stated. Maybe if we eliminate hardware as the root cause, the bios itself might have an issue? Very strange indeed.

The computer is a pieced together computer. The system started life as a Pentium 150 back in 96. Now about the only thing left from that old box is the floppy which I don't know if it works, I haven't used the floppy in several years. Here is the breakdown of the system:
Motherboard; ASUS CUV4X-E, summer 2001.
Processor ;Intel PIII 1G processor, summer 2001.
Primary Hard drive; Maxtor 19.1Gb, Manufactured 16 Nov 1999.
Secondary Hard drive; Western Digital 19.1Gb, Manufactured 24 July 2000.
3.5 Floppy; Alps Electric Co, date unknown
Primary CD; CD-RW Drive, Memorex 52X24X52X, Manufactured Nov 2002.
Secondary CD; CD-Rom, Acer (36X I think), Manufactured August 1998,
RAM; two sticks of Lei 512MB PC 133 64X64, Summer 2001.
Video; ATI Radeon 9550 AGP 256MB, bought two weeks ago.
10/100 network card; Generic, date unknown but can't be more than three or four years based on the store sticker on it.
Audio; Creative labs Sound Blaster Live SB0060, sometime in 2000.
USB 2.0; generic card, April 2005

I also had a 56K modem in the box but I just took it out as I don't use it.

So what does that make the machine, old or new or something in between? I think I can rule some of components off as good like the new video card. Others like the hard drives and memory are highly suspicious at this point. As for buying a new system, that isn’t going to happen. I’ve been using my laptop which works fine. It is the reason why I didn’t do a dual boot with the desktop, why dual boot when you got two computers? If I do buy a new desktop I would actually build it myself, which I was thinking of doing a 64bit system for summer 2006. Even then I would have this one basically still together and I would just be trying to get this one working again anyways. 13 items and anyone or combinations of could be bad. I’ll give the tests a try if I can get one that will run from the operating system. I tried the memtest86 from a boot disk and the computer still loads into Linux. Just for the record, the only time the computer was beeping was with the old Voodoo3 card. The ATI doesn’t make the computer beep but the hard drive light still remains on constantly.

As for the boot order I am positive, I’m sitting at BIOS right now looking at the screen. 1. ATAPI CD-ROM [Memorex], 2. IDE Hard Drive [Maxtor]… (figured I would add the front part incase there might be a problem that someone might see). I even switched my cabling in the computer so that the CD-ROMs were the primary and the HDs were the secondary. Still won’t recognize any other boot disks. I would boot them from my laptop but it isn’t configured for CD-ROM booting (Thanks HP).


BTW I have a boot option called 2681-12. Does anyone know what that means?

Did you try a CD boot disk or a floppy boot disk? If you tried a floppy it won't work because currently your BIOS is set to boot from harddrive before floppy.

It is very unusual that you're not booting in the right order. Could you try the CD that you're booting with in a different computer (maybe that laptop you mentioned) just to see if it works? There is a possibility that it's the CDs themselves that aren't working correctly... perhaps your burner had an issue writing the boot sector of the CD or something.

What I would do if it turned out that everything else was right, but the computer STILL wasn't booting in the right order, would be to flash the BIOS. That's a risky procedure, however, so you might want to get a more knowledgeable person's opinion first. There are only so many things that could be causing the improper boot order... 1. BIOS not being set correctly (which you've excluded) 2. CD being bad (which you can test) 3. CD Drive being bad (as long as you can use CDs, it should be fine) 4. The motherboard (either the BIOS or the motherboard itself).

One other thing, I've never seen this before as it's pretty much already implied in the boot order, but is there an option to allow or not allow boot from a CD Drive in your BIOS? If there is an option like that, perhaps it got turned to off at some point?

memtest86 was by CD

I tried the boot CDs in my laptop as mentioned in the previos post. HP has got the laptop so locked down not even the Mandrake 10.1 disk that will boot in the desktop computer will boot in the laptop. I haven't been able to get into the BIOS of the laptop to even see what its boot order is but I'm assuming that it is from the hard drive first. As for other computers, I really don't have access to other computers. I don't think my boss would like it to much if I started playing with the work computers (but what he don't know won't hurt him either), and I'm pretty sure none of my friends would want me messing with there systems either.

I'll check for the allow boot from CD Drive option. I've never seen that as an option but I also wasn't looking for it either.

Okay, I've done some background searches for information for you. First thing I've learned, for your laptop, the most likely buttons to get to the BIOS are F2 and F10. Just try booting it and pounding those buttons as fast as you can as the period that you need to press the button at can be very short. One person even talked about having to reboot the computer several times in order to get the button at the right time. Second, I'm sure you probably weren't considering this, but don't flash the bios for that hp laptop as you'll have a good chance of getting a doorstop back. Seems like HP laptops have a higher than average mortality rate during that particular procedure... something to do with the chips they use. Haha, just thought I'd throw that in as I ran across it while I was looking around and thought it might interest you.