Very Odd!!

Kriptek · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 3:12 am Post subject: Very Odd!!

Ok, i was out of town for a few days. I left my laptop turned on (plugged into ac power). I was not logged into gentoo, rather just left it sitting at the logoin prompt after boot. So today i go to login but i get nothing. I type in root or any of my other users and it just waits a second then returns the login prompt again. So i figure it just needs a reboot, so i try ctrl+alt+del, that returned cmd not found. So i had no choice but to hard power down. Then on the reboot i get a error saying primary hdd not found and primary optical drive not found. My question is how the heck could this have happened?!?! no one had access to the machine while i was gone and it wasnt even logged in...i also checked for power outages and nothing. The laptop isnt more than 2 months old so what gives.

any ideas, suggestions on this very strnage situation?

thank-you

Kriptek

masseya · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 3:23 am Post subject:

This sounds very much like a hardware problem of some sort. I'm really not sure though. I'm moving this to H&L from OTG in hopes of attracting some better eyes to see what's going on. It's certainly very strange.
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Kriptek · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 3:27 am Post subject:

thanx,

yes it is very very very odd. I know the (optical) dvd drive works because i just put the gentoo cd in and the drive spun up but i still got the boot fail message. Even though the drive had activity the bios still couldnt detect it.

Wow this is wack...its a dell inspiron 8200 not more than 2months old, if that helps at all. This has just wrecked my day

Kriptek · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 4:42 am Post subject:

so after hours of touble shooting this problem i have come to one conclusion. The bus controler is DEAD!! Now is there any possible way that this could happen given my scenario? Left the laptop on for one day plugged into ac power, sitting at the gentoo login prompt. Then i came back today and it seems to have all gone to crap! I checked for power outages/spikes and there was nothing in my area. Could it be that i got one of the seemingly many "lemons" that dell is shipping these days ?

*sigh*

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Will nothing boot on it? Did it come with any sort of rescue CD?
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masseya · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 5:43 am Post subject:

I suppose the bus controller could be dead. Hopefully, it's still under warranty. I suppose if it's not you could get a converting cable for more money than it's worth. Then you can open up your laptop and test the HDD with a standard IDE connection in a desktop system. You'd have an answer and if it was simply the HDD dying then you might be able to replace the HDD and still salvage the laptop. However, I would hope it's still under warranty.

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Kriptek · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 6:28 am Post subject:

yes it is still under warranty. about the only thing i can do now is send it back to dell and let them fix it. i could ask them to send me the parts but then again i dont know if its just the controller or the entire mobo. ahh well i guess its time to upgrade that one year warranty....here i thought that would be plenty but the thing is already dead and it hasnt even been two whole months since i first took delivery on it. i know this may sound silly but just to be clear....there is no way gentoo could have caused this is there. I mean after all, i only left it sitting at the login prompt for one day. lol anyone reading this and thinking about getting a dell laptop...i would think twice. but then again i might just have bad luck when it comes to notebooks. before i went with dell i had two gateway's go bad on me!

drakonite · l33t Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 768 Location: Lincoln, NE

It definatly sounds like the hardware overheated. Dell probably won't just send the parts to you, they'll make you send it in or make you take it to a (dell licensed) repair shop. (not possitive but that's usually what places like that have told me...).

Laptops can often suffer from inadequate cooling. It's not expected to leaving them running for that amount of time at once so if they are only giving it just enough cooling power for what they would normally be used for then leaving it on 24/7 could easily overheat it. IIRC someone was just complaining on these forums in the past week about a dell laptop overheating with normal usage... As long as I got the brand right I think I might have to recommend against dell too...unless you live in cold climates

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Digiman · Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2003 9:07 pm Post subject: Power Surge

You may have also had a power surge while you were gone. Also, if a machine is in power saver mode and you have a power surge or outage it could cause problems. Not a good idea to leave a PC or Laptop pluged in and turned on while you are not there. Even if it was off you could get surges while it is plugged in. I always unplug my PC's if I am not going to be home for a couple of days or more.

-- Digiman

dholowiski · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 22

I would agree that it likely was due to overheating. Especially plugged into AC, a laptop can get quite hot, and if it didn't have great ventilation, that could have killed the bus controller.

dweigert · Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2003 6:09 pm Post subject:

Dell laptops require the apm or acpi to be enabled to get the fans to go. also, there is a kernel module specific to Dell laptops that lets you see the status of the fans or get them spinning manually. It is called i8k.

Dan