[ltp] A21P CPU Soft Error Fixed - But How?? (A Bit OT)

[Donald B. Altman]

Hello,

I'm submitting this because it seems so weird and because I haven't seen anything
about it in the archives.  Since it's not completely about Linux, I apologize for
the OT part of it ....


An acquaintance has an A21p/512M/60G and had trouble installing SuSE 10.1.  He already had XP installed.

Some short time after the failed install, his XP would only boot into safe mode.  Any attempt to 
boot into full XP hung the machine at the XP graphic.

When he tried to boot into Knoppix 5.1, via CD or DVD, using all the cheat codes he could think of
(noapic, acpi=off, fb800x600, etc), it hung when trying to reach run level 5.  The error was
a "CPU Soft Error" with a stack traceback.  Since it was after run level 3, I began to suspect a
graphics hardware problem.  Changing the cheat codes had no effect.  There were never any
beep codes or other problems at POST.

I tried to run Partition Magic 8 from CD, which indicated a problem with the partition table, but I've seen
spurious errors from it before.

BUT!!  The system booted into Knoppix 3.9 with no problem, even at 1280X1024.  I then thought
that the difference between xfree and xorg might account for bypassing the graphics problem.  

This behavior was repeatable.

I booted into Knoppix 3.9 and started QTParted.  I saw a FAT32 partition containing the notebook's
original W98 software marked as hidden.  The XP partition was marked as active.  The two partitions
from the SuSE install had been deleted.

I marked the W98 partition as active thinking I would boot into W98 and run PC doctor.  Instead, the machine
booted XP with no problems....  repeatedly.  It also now boots Knoppix 5.1 with no problems.  It never did boot
into the W98 partition.  The machine now seems completely fixed.

What happened?  Has anyone ever seen anything similar?

TIA

Don A

-- 
Donald B. Altman
Singular Technologies
Croton-on-Hudson,  NY