if I try to add more hardware on my system, I get lots of problems on boot, often network doesn't work, and usually sound fails. (device not found) yesterday I tried adding a second cdrw, but on boot the system never completed detecting IDE-devices, so I disconnected it again. (I guess my psu was maxed out) upon reboot, network, sound and mouse failed to work.

after some messing with modules and a few more reboots I usually get the system healthy again.

anyone have any idea what the problem may be? do I have too much hardware to be able to add more?


specs:
AMD athlon 2500+
1 GB ram
dead integrated network card (eth0)
Realtek gibabit ethernet (eth1)
4 disks, 1 dvd-rw (2 disks connected to secondary controller)
ATI radeon graphics card on agp
nvidia nforce2 integrated soundcard

OS: Mandriva 10.2 LE

I'm going to take a shot in the dark here... you sure your power supply outputs enough power to handle all that stuff?

You computer should be able to handle having all your disk i/o controllers maxed out and all your PCI slots full providing it gets enough current to power everything.

The dead on-board nic sounds like a red flag to me as well. You have a scope (perfered) or a multimeter so you can check the built in power regulators on the mainboard?

First, try removing everything (sound, nic, CDROM's) but the boot HD and see if it comes up OK.

Run memtest (I think it's on the first 2005LE CD/DVD. Press F1 and F2 IIRC or get a floppy from www.memtest86.com or www.memtest.org). Replace memory if bad.

Add things piece by piece, rebooting after each and see when things start to go bad.

- Peder

my psu is rated 300 W. I think it is powerful enough to run what I have, since my system is stable, I only get trouble if I change anything.

I think I figured out part of the problem with the added drive... the oldest problem in the book: one ide channel - two masters - bad idea. this explains why I could not boot, but not the main problem: why do I have trouble with drivers if I change something, even after I reverse the change?

If you have harddrake running, hardware changes are detected during boot and the system attempts to autoconfigure the new hardware. When you remove the new hardware, that change is noted as well and the system attempts to autoconfigure itself back. Sometimes it takes a little fiddling before everything gets back the way it should from the initial attempt to configure the new hardware. The default is to have harddrake run at boot but I usually disable it; harddrake slows down bootup and doesn't work all that well IMHO.