jrmcferren
Enlightened
I had two computer crashes tonight, I'm talking about turn the whole computer off crashes due to the computer freezing up. The first crash is the oddest of them all.
First Crash:
I was loading the radar image of the local area when I noticed that my Keyboard LEDs went from Numlock on, Capslock off, Scroll Lock off, to Numlock off, Capslock on, scroll lock on. This usually means that the microcontroller in my keyboard has crashed. Next I must tell you that even though this is a PS/2 keyboard it is designed to be connected and disconnected with the power on. I unplugged the keyboard cable from the back of the keyboard and reconnected it. First time same config on the leds as the crash, second time the LEDs flashed as normal, but the keyboard did not respond. I decided to go ahead and shut down gracefully by using the mouse. I noticed that the mouse was not moving. I looked over at the mouse to find that it had gone dark.
It is an optical with a light in the back. I knew I was in some kind of trouble. Still concentrating on a graceful shutdown as I'm using Linux I reached for the power button just a tap will send it into a shutdown sequence. I looked at my router and found that the LED for my computer was OFF. This usually only happens under two circumstances, the computer is completely powered off to the point where it is either unplugged or the switch on the power supply is off. Now remember I still had a picture on my monitor. I then looked down at the Hard drive led before pressing the button, then I noticed that the power LED was OFF. Now remember I had a picture albeit frozen as I then noticed on my monitor and the fans were still running. I had no choice to reach back and shut the switch off and restart hard. It seemed that the motherboard turned off but power was still flowing to the video card and the power supply was still on. The computer had a continuous uptime of almost six and a half days not a record BTW.
Second Crash:
After restarting from the first crash and logging in I re-started my UPS software, and Seti@Home, Note that my email program, IM program, and even music program restart automatically at login along with my Terminal emulator if it was up when the system was shut down. I then restarted Firefox and restored the session, clicked an option on the radar and the system froze again. I looked at the mouse, dark. I tried the keyboard, unresponsive, tried pressing the power button, no response. Did a hard restart yet again, but the router LED and power LED were still on. Uptime was around seven minutes.
I restarted the system with no other changes other than I loaded Seti first then my UPS software. No problems yet.
Thoughts to possible diagnosis:
On the first crash I believe Cosmic radiation corrupted the memory (it happens all the time this is why servers have ECC memory) and caused a malformed instruction to reach the CPU causing the motherboard to shut down partially. This could have also been caused by a power glitch that got past the UPS and the power supply. On the second crash I believe either a memory cell did not get cleared properly for some reason (I would have no idea why, but if something odd happened who knows) or another power glitch.
For those that have better degrees than I do I ask the following questions:
-Why and How would a motherboard shut down only partially and not take the video card with it and also affect the circuits that operate on +5VSB?
-If the motherboard shuts down, why would it leave the power on signal set to low (turn on)?
-Why would the video card keep displaying the same static image?
-Do you have an better theories as to what may have happened?
-Why would the system crash a second time and not a third?
Note I left a lot of information out regarding system specs to keep this post shorter.
First Crash:
I was loading the radar image of the local area when I noticed that my Keyboard LEDs went from Numlock on, Capslock off, Scroll Lock off, to Numlock off, Capslock on, scroll lock on. This usually means that the microcontroller in my keyboard has crashed. Next I must tell you that even though this is a PS/2 keyboard it is designed to be connected and disconnected with the power on. I unplugged the keyboard cable from the back of the keyboard and reconnected it. First time same config on the leds as the crash, second time the LEDs flashed as normal, but the keyboard did not respond. I decided to go ahead and shut down gracefully by using the mouse. I noticed that the mouse was not moving. I looked over at the mouse to find that it had gone dark.
It is an optical with a light in the back. I knew I was in some kind of trouble. Still concentrating on a graceful shutdown as I'm using Linux I reached for the power button just a tap will send it into a shutdown sequence. I looked at my router and found that the LED for my computer was OFF. This usually only happens under two circumstances, the computer is completely powered off to the point where it is either unplugged or the switch on the power supply is off. Now remember I still had a picture on my monitor. I then looked down at the Hard drive led before pressing the button, then I noticed that the power LED was OFF. Now remember I had a picture albeit frozen as I then noticed on my monitor and the fans were still running. I had no choice to reach back and shut the switch off and restart hard. It seemed that the motherboard turned off but power was still flowing to the video card and the power supply was still on. The computer had a continuous uptime of almost six and a half days not a record BTW.Second Crash:
After restarting from the first crash and logging in I re-started my UPS software, and Seti@Home, Note that my email program, IM program, and even music program restart automatically at login along with my Terminal emulator if it was up when the system was shut down. I then restarted Firefox and restored the session, clicked an option on the radar and the system froze again. I looked at the mouse, dark. I tried the keyboard, unresponsive, tried pressing the power button, no response. Did a hard restart yet again, but the router LED and power LED were still on. Uptime was around seven minutes.
I restarted the system with no other changes other than I loaded Seti first then my UPS software. No problems yet.
Thoughts to possible diagnosis:
On the first crash I believe Cosmic radiation corrupted the memory (it happens all the time this is why servers have ECC memory) and caused a malformed instruction to reach the CPU causing the motherboard to shut down partially. This could have also been caused by a power glitch that got past the UPS and the power supply. On the second crash I believe either a memory cell did not get cleared properly for some reason (I would have no idea why, but if something odd happened who knows) or another power glitch.
For those that have better degrees than I do I ask the following questions:
-Why and How would a motherboard shut down only partially and not take the video card with it and also affect the circuits that operate on +5VSB?
-If the motherboard shuts down, why would it leave the power on signal set to low (turn on)?
-Why would the video card keep displaying the same static image?
-Do you have an better theories as to what may have happened?
-Why would the system crash a second time and not a third?
Note I left a lot of information out regarding system specs to keep this post shorter.
, That's what I get for troubleshooting a computer problem that late at night. I am due for a new power supply anyway. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and buy a PC Power and Cooling power supply. This is the second Thermaltake power supply I put into this system. Thanks guys, I should have been able to figure out the power supply thing myself. 
