From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 17 03:29:46 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA27D16A4CE for ; Thu, 17 Mar 2005 03:29:46 +0000 (GMT) Received: from sccmmhc92.asp.att.net (sccmmhc92.asp.att.net [204.127.203.212]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 386F043D2D for ; Thu, 17 Mar 2005 03:29:46 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jlagarde@bigfoot.com) Received: from [192.168.1.100] (12-219-244-121.client.mchsi.com[12.219.244.121]) by sccmmhc92.asp.att.net (sccmmhc92) with ESMTP id <20050317032944m92003a1q1e>; Thu, 17 Mar 2005 03:29:45 +0000 Message-ID: <4238F9A7.5050000@bigfoot.com> Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:29:43 -0800 From: Jean Lagarde User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (Windows/20041103) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <4237A3A3.3040704@bigfoot.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: 5.3-release fine with 512MB RAM, reboots at times with 1.5GB (but no panic) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 03:29:47 -0000 Thanks to all who replied. So it seems the consensus is a likely hardware issue, and I am leaning that way as well now. I will try the suggestion about disabling ACPI however. To address some of the other comments, that exact CPU-mobo-memory configuration worked fine running Win2000 for many years, so I doubt it is the problem per se. Also, I did try the 1GB stick alone yesterday and it had similar symptoms as for 1.5 GB. I do know where to look for a panic message and there is none. About my running Win2000 on this hardware before, I would initially have thought that this made a hardware problem improbable, but I used to run the computer continually and I guess it's not impossible that there was a hardware degradation that was mitigated by the system staying warm all the time. The system was mothballed for a few months before my FreeBSD install, so the prolonged period at room temperature may have allowed some motherboard degradation to get worse. I was led to form that hypothesis because I noticed yesterday that there seems to be a relation with temperature: I ran burnP6 and crashme concurrently (both ran without problem with any memory configuration but I realize that neither of these two utilities necessarily stress the system in the way I need) and since they ran fine with the 1.5 GB in I tried to start KDE again (leaving the stress applications running) and it did bring everything up without rebooting. I stopped the system and let it cool down and KDE made the system reboot as before after a restart. I guess my next step will be to install chm or something like that to monitor the temperatures as the system runs, but anyway, it seems this is likely not a FreeBSD problem anymore, so I thank you all again for the suggestions and will continue troubleshooting the hardware. My immediate guess is either the CPU or motherboard. Oh yeah, I still wonder thought why "memtest all" only seemed to "find" 512MB of RAM, but I think it is a side issue at this time. Cheers, Jean