I am running Slackware 10.1, and lately my computer has started to lock up very frequently. I can't remember to have done anything special with the system before the problems started. I was running a self-compiled 2.6.10-kernel (which have been working ok earlier). I have now compiled and installed a 2.6.11-kernel. I was hoping it would fix the problem, but it remained (i used the same configuration-file that i had generated for the 2.6.10-kernel though). I have a ATI Radeon card, and i was using the ATI-drivers. But i have tried with my old xorg.conf file too (which doesn't use the ATI drivers), and my computer will still freeze.

Hardware:

Motherboard: Gigabyte K8NS nForce3 250. With onboard NIC (supported by the forcedeth-driver, but i haven't enabled it because i don't use the card) and onboard soundcard (supported by the AC97-driver). S-ATA controllers: Either NVIDIA or Silicon Image (I'm not certain).

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+

RAM: Corsair TWINX1024-3200LL DDR-DIMM 1024MB

NIC: Linksys LNE100TX

Graphics: Powercolor Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP


Some files:
Kernel configuration
xorg.conf file generated by fglrxconfig (with ATI-drivers)
xorg.cong file generated by xf86config (my original xorg.conf)


I would really like to fix this.

can you tell something more about that freeze.
-can you use ctrl-alt-F6 to get a console ?
-does it just freeze for a minute or so ?
-if you have another pc, can you ssh into your own pc ?
-does it happen when using certain softwares ?
-can you try with the default 2.4 ----kernel and see if the prob is still there ?
-did you check the memory ( maybe use memtest : google for it )
-did you try to lower the clock-freq. in the bios ?

all of that could give a clue....

egag

-No, CTRL-ALT-F6 (or F5/F4...) doesn't do anything.

-No, i have to reboot.

-I don't have another PC, but i don't think it would work. My computer seems completely frozen.

-No, it appears that it can happen at any time.

-I have tried using the default 2.4-kernel, and it appears to work fine. But i don't want to use the 2.4-kernel.

-I haven't checked my memory. But i don't think it is the problem. Slackware with the 2.4-kernel is running fine, and i have had several other distros installed without any trouble (VectorLinux, Ubuntu, Mepis and Debian).

-No i haven't tried to lower the clock-frequency, i have now idea how. But as i mentioned, several other distros have been running without any problems.

It looks like the memory is the problem after all.

My RAM: Corsair TWINX1024-3200LL DDR-DIMM 1024MB
That is 2 chips on 512 MB each.

When i am only using one of them, everything is working fine. I ran 3 passes of memtest86+ on both om them (one chip at the time), and got no errors. In GNU/Linux i compiled several programs at the same time without any trouble, and the system is stable.

When i try to run memtest with both the RAM-chips in my computer, it will always freeze before it has completed even a single pass. And when i boot GNU/Linux it will often freeze. If i try to compile something the computer will almost certainly freeze, and if it doesn't i will probably end up with a segfault errormessage.

So for now i am only using one of the RAM-chips. But i would of course prefer to use both.

The chips seems to be fine when i teast them separately in memtest, is there still any reason to suspect there is something wrong with them? They have both been working perfectly earlier, my problem has only occured now recently.

Any advice on what to do?

(By the way, in memtest it says 200MHz under settings when i am using one chip, and 167MHz when i am using both of the chips. Any reason?).

i think those two modules are not a good match.
but i guess you can change them for a good matching pair where you bought them.

they give life-time warranty, don't they......

egag