hello,
I am new here. But I do have a question: 'how to detect that computer is crashed or not'.
So far, I just know there could be caused by two ways, software or hardware... But I really don't have any idea to detect the computer is crased. If I could tell, I may make a detective program to prevent it or to reboot computer...
If anyone could answer me this question, It will be very appreciated......

I'm afraid that is best achieved by setting up two
machines that monitor each other via the network
interface... you can try a local daemon type of
process, but it depends on which level the machine
dies on to make that feasible ...


Cheers,
Tink

Well, what is your definition of 'crashed'? If crashed is a hard lockup during use of the OS, then you just reboot and try again (but in an ideal world you would find and solve the problem, then post the solution on LQ ). But if your definition of crashed is a OS/hardware failure which requires an OS format or new hardware, then it could be harder to fix. If either one happens, you should be able to know if it happened or not . Anyhoo, you can use e2fsck to check your hard drive for corruption, bad blocks/superblocks/etc., and you can use Memtest86:
http://memtest86.org
to check your RAM. The longer it runs without crashing, the better your RAM is. A day or two without crashing means you have no problems with RAM. For the CPU, I think Prime95 can do that (don't know the link, sorry). Be careful about overclocking, that can start system crashes (freezes when it gets too hot, how ironic ).

One of the best ways to tell is to press the num lock key, if the light doesn't change it crashed

-Joey

Unless your numlock key doesn't work for some reason . Even if it does, sometimes it just doesn't want to turn on (for me, at least), and the comp didn't lock up. Hehe .