FC4 crash on Medion 5400

[PeterJP]

Hi,

I installed FC4 on my laptop, but I'm having problems. First, the laptop hung twice while formatting the partition during install (auto partitioning selected). A few days later, I started the install first thing in the morning, because I know I'm having problems when the machine overheats. Installation went fine, but now it's crashing from time to time while working. I'm using LaTeX edited in emacs, and the last crash happened when I opened a Japanese text file in emacs.

About my overheating problems: I also tried installing Gentoo before, but it crashed like hell while compiling, so I went for a precompiled release instead. During Gentoo install, I checked my ACPI code, and there's no errors in it (I downloaded the ACPI VM code from the laptop's flash, disassembled it and recompiled it with the Intel compiler that's more serious about buggy VM code than the Microsoft one. I read about Linux not recognising ACPI as a possible cause of overheating, so I did some exploration into it.)

In Windows, the machine doesn't crash. It still refuses to set the fans to higher speeds, but instead it just slows down the processor.

I have a Medion MD5400 with a 2.53GHz Pentium4. For information on this laptop, check out this link that says so much more about it than I can possibly summarize: http://www.staschke.de/linux/md5400-eng.html


Peter.

[tashirosgt]

You probably know more about this computer than anyone else on the forum. Can you summarize how you verify that ACPI is working? Can one examine the files /proc/acpi and tell? And what is the simplest check on cpu speed that is independent of that information?

Have you run a memory check or a diagnostic program on the hard drive?

[PeterJP]

Hi Tashiro Sgt.,

I've checked /proc/acpi under Knoppix. It doesn't do what I want to, but then it doesn't seem to do what Windows wants to either (fan speed doesn't go up when temperature does). I check cpu speed by "feeling", as in: "darn, this is slow ! it wasn't like this a second ago !" :-S Mind you, the machine has a full Pentium4 that cannot be put into slower MHz speed modes, so the only way to slow it down is to stall the pipeline.

I haven't run a memory check nor a diagnostic program on the HD. I'll do that right now. Thanks for the tip !


Peter.

[PeterJP]

Memory check with Super PI and hard disk check with HDtune worked fine. I took the simple, though more expensive, route of buying a new PC, a move that I've been thinking about for quite some time already. That will teach my laptop to refuce to cooperate !
Peter.