Hello everyone,

<WARNING: LONG POST>

so, this morning my box didn't boot or, at least not fully.

Before I give details of what happened, perhaps i should point a few anomalies that I have been experiencing for at least 6mnth:

1) this thread https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...em-4175726131/ was never really solved or, maybe it was:
- one day my system wouldn't turn on at all and noticed a '67' error on the motherboard digital display (or maybe L9). Many conflicting theories on the internet of what BIOS 67 error is, depending on motherboard manufacturer. Anyhow, i asked a technician to have a look at it and all he did was: take the nvidia card out, replace it with an old SVGA and the BIOS seemed to ram-out of that vicious loop. The system booted also after the original nvidia card was put back and "reboot-insead-of-switch-off disappeared (both when switching OFF with 'halt' and/or 'Application Menu' commands). After, I had my box up and running fast and flawless for another 2-3mnth until...

2) a couple of the front USB ports stopped working,

3) the 'kioslave error' started appearing out of no-where causing continuous system crashes... and continued even after I cleared the ~/...kioslave file

4) random error 67 and no-boot, but this time I thought that i knew what to do: remove the nvidia card, perhaps also 1 RAM-stick, power it up and break that memory loop. And it worked.

5) in the last week, or two, apps that were meant to stay hidden on System Tray disappeared and I had to open them manually; then reboot and back they were nicely hidden on the System Tray. Something i noticed last night was that Kmail disappeared from system tray and I thought: argh..., it will return at the next boot.

So, this morning:

a) Slackware loaded in VGA mode (big letters only on one screen; usually after a few seconds i have the boot msg on both screens)
b) at the end of this anomalous boot, i DID NOT have keyboard nor mouse,
c) rebooted.... same response,
d) for a second I doubted whether I upgraded the system last night and forgot to run LILO so, although i was pretty sure that i hadn't, I booted a Slackware current CD and proceeded to the usual repair as in 'when i forget to run LILO'; mounted the system partition /dev/sda1 on /mnt and run pktool to reinstall LILO. Success!
restart the system: no changes! Slackware is still booting in vga mode with no drivers.
e) I decided to open the box and do the usual trick: take the nvidia card out power it up and restore it. This time when i turned the machine on, it would not boot at all and the ugly BIOS 67 error appeared again
f) repeated e). no luck.
g) repeated e) this time removing all RAM sticks too, NO LUCK. Powering the machine would almost immediately display error 67

Time to call my technician friend. Now he has the computer and I am waiting for (good) news however,
- does anyone suspect, like me, that the motherboard has gone to heaven?
- I am not sure it is but I ask anyway: is 4 years an acceptable life-span for these super delicate motherboards, now? (i had a 15+ year old Pentium that still booted Slackware 14 32b like a charm before I gave it to a friend from west Africa, last year).
- could a 'misbehaving motherboard cause so many software anomalies?

I am not even going to ask whether anyone else has ever experienced something remotely similar as I suspect i am the "lucky one".

Any additional thoughts?

Apologies for the long post.

It's got to be hardware with all those weird messages.

OK, summarising, you have given us a six month tailspin on your box.

There's reaction to disaster, but not enough diagnostic information. Something has gone, and I hope your friend can sort it.

If you get it back working, I'd suspect disk, OS, Ram, and Motherboard. No junk parts get to heaven, btw. I have every reason they belong in landfill.

Practically, yes. But i was also trying to explain this to understand if i am unlucky or the hardware world has gone really sh@#£y in the last decade, or two. I still have the €185 invoice for the mtb dated Oct/2020 (and all the other components differ just a few days from each other as i built the desktop myself, in case it turns out that IS NOT the mtb).

Now the dilemma is, do i bin it and build a new one? What if I buy a new mtb and it turns out that it's the cpu that burned out? Or the RAM?

I live in a small place where, not even the biggest computer servicing shop will have those spare parts for testing (by elimination)

Likely list:

bios 3.3v battery
bios corruption
power supply failing (but not yet failed)
other component, eg, capacitor, failing (but not yet failed)

Helpful to those that might have insight and be able to help:
what mobo? (manufacturer, date, version)
what software (version, date)
what peripherals are installed on the board that did not come out of the box when initially setup?

Check every BIOS setting first (if you make significant BIOS changes), or reset to factory defaults and reboot.

Make notes of every thing you do/change, then post results.
Cheers,

hardware symptoms:https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...8/#post4949330

1 members found this post helpful.

My first thought is the motherboard. And yes stuff is crappier than ever.

Look at the motherboard with a magnifying glass. Look at the capacitors - the little round drum looking things. Are any swollen? Then bad. Do any look like they are 'leaking'? Then bad.

However the software problems - I don't think a bad MB would do that.

1 members found this post helpful.

By chance is this an MSI motherboard? I ask because there are a lot of "error 67" posts around with certain MSI Bioses. If it will initialize even on one stick of RAM your tech buddy should likely flash to an upgrade firmware image.

Hardware. Likely motherboard. You can test RAM and CPU using memtest86+ overnight. How's the cooling and temps?

https://forums.evga.com/Critical-err...-m2279173.aspx
In their case it was bad memory ...

If this machine is a Xeon it probably has ECC memory. If so, it should be able to report by itself if some memory stick is going bad.

My guess is bad PSU or bad capacitor(s) on the motherboard.

regards Henrik

Yes, true, a bad PSU can cause many issues. Never go cheap.

2 members found this post helpful.

From post 4: IF you do the work, and provide proper feedback to us, we can usually narrow down a problem to a particular device. You seem to be getting grief from your nvidia card. So if there's another graphics option for you, I'd use it. Then if you can get slackware going even in runlevel 3, we can check the essentials. The Nvidis install script also has an /uninstall option to nuke the install. Get that running and we can check stuff.

1 members found this post helpful.

[on a slightly different note, i am not sure why I can't attach a .jpg picture anymore - getting this: Your submission could not be processed because a security token was missing.

If this occurred unexpectedly, please inform the administrator and describe the action you performed before you received this error. ]

*<Apologies for the late replies; reluctantly, I had to resolute with using my work laptop with extremely important stuff in it>

Please, respectfully, i am done with this nvidia "stuff". The native drivers for some reasons, just DO NOT install. I have tried countless times.

Well, next week Mon or Tue, i should hear news from the technician who is attempting to disassemble and test each components one-by-one.