My brother just dumped the subject laptop on me and I’m having a boot
problem - not with openSUSE, but before that even becomes an issue.
This is a Turion 64 x2 machine, maybe 2-3 years old. At power on, I may or
may not get the HP logo screen. If the logo screen does present, I can
always get to the BIOS setup but it may or may not boot from the selected
media. The randomness is pretty much the same whether I try to boot from
the hard drive, the CD, or a thumb drive. Once the boot begins, the
machine will finish the bootup and run for as long as I’ve had the patience
to sit there - it ran a 24-hour memtest without problems and ran a full
read/write surface scan of the 500Gb drive without a hitch - both reporting
no errors.
The problem with booting continues and gets progressively worse if the
machine is restarted, so a “cooling off” period seems to help. On a hunch,
I blew the machine out and got a big cloud of dust so heat problems were my
first thought.
My question is this: could the erratic reboot be due to a flakey BIOS? If
so, what are the heat failure mechanics of the BIOS NVR? Are they similar
to the old eprom issues of dropped/weak bits which might be cured by
re-writing the BIOS? It would be nice if I could fix this thing by simply
re-flashing the BIOS!
> Hi
> Might be a flaky BIOS battery? I would run prime95 on it as well, that
> should give it a good stress test.
I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the BIOS code is in NVRAM aka
flash which is not dependent on the battery. The BIOS setting, OTOH, are
in the battery backed up ram hence the clear jumpers and/or battery removal
to reset - although the settings could also be in flash in more recent
(last 10 years or so) machines ;-).
More extensive testing shows that there is a time/activity related shutdown
so something time/heat related is going on. I’m trying to get openSUSE
installed so that I can look at the on-board temps and power settings.
Something is sick in this puppy and I’m figuring that the final answer will
be either a new main board or a new laptop - which ever is cheaper.
Being the (old) geek in the family is getting to be a drag!
> Hi
> Might be a flaky BIOS battery? I would run prime95 on it as well, that
> should give it a good stress test.
I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the BIOS code is in NVRAM
aka flash which is not dependent on the battery. The BIOS setting,
OTOH, are in the battery backed up ram hence the clear jumpers and/or
battery removal to reset - although the settings could also be in flash
in more recent (last 10 years or so) machines ;-).
More extensive testing shows that there is a time/activity related
shutdown so something time/heat related is going on. I’m trying to get
openSUSE installed so that I can look at the on-board temps and power
settings. Something is sick in this puppy and I’m figuring that the
final answer will be either a new main board or a new laptop - which
ever is cheaper.
Being the (old) geek in the family is getting to be a drag!
[/QUOTE]
Sounds like it might be a dismantle time and look at putting something
like artic silver ceramique (it’s what I use) if the cpu heatsink can be
removed… http://www.arcticsilver.com/ceramique.htm
Use SUSE Studio to build a cli version with your test tools?
I did some research on the dv6000 series and found there were no reported overheat problems, at the same time check the hp website and see if your system qualifies for the one time repair. if so call the service center and they will help get it fixed.
i know on some models they did not apply the gel to the heatsink and this could be the trouble.
2nd on the hp website you could download the new bios driver and flash the system ( it might take care of the problem.
>
> I did some research on the dv6000 series and found there were no
> reported overheat problems, at the same time check the hp website and
> see if your system qualifies for the one time repair. if so call the
> service center and they will help get it fixed.
>
> i know on some models they did not apply the gel to the heatsink and
> this could be the trouble.
> 2nd on the hp website you could download the new bios driver and flash
> the system ( it might take care of the problem.
Thanks. The heat problem is solved; a blast of compressed air produced a
cloud that would do a West Texas dust storm proud! Seems that my esteemed
brother has been doing some re-modeling and living in an atmosphere full of
dust from the sheet rock for several months
The startup problem remains, however: Power off or a hard reboot will hang
2 out of 3 times. Just as a test, I pulled all the memory sticks and tried
the power on. At about the same rate(2-of-3), the machine hangs and does
nothing then on the third try it will give the diagnostic beeps. Ergo:
it’s not even getting through the BIOS POST process. Oh well, hitting the
power button 3-4 times is still cheaper than a new laptop…
