Re: [libreplanet-discuss] libreplanet-discuss Digest, Vol 41, Issue 7 - Laptop fix

[arthur_torrey]

In my limited experience, the biggest gotchas are memory issues, power supply 
problems hard drive failures and heat...

1. Heat - when was the last time you opened up the case on the laptop and 
cleaned out all the dust and crud?  This may be all it is, as the crud can 
(rarely) cause intermittent bad connections, but more importantly can cause 
parts to overheat and go into thermal shutdown...

2. Memory - Memtest86 is probably the most thourough tester for memory out 
there - and is included on most distro CD's as a boot option, set it up to do 
the most rigourous testing and let it run for multiple iterations...

3. Hard drive - defragging and re-organizing the drive is probably a good place 
to start, but don't really have a good suggestion for solid diagnostics, 
especially ones that are non-data damaging.

4. Power supply - does the failure pattern change depending on whether or not 
you are plugged into the wall?  Certainly worth looking at the battery 
condition, especially in a unit that age.

As a general diagnostic and repair tool I also recommend SystemRescueCD 
<http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage> which is a GNU/Linux based 
distro specifically designed for system testing and repair - good tool...

ART

------------------
Arthur Torrey - <arthur_torrey@comcast.net>
-------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 18:39:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@yahoo.com>
To: schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net,
        libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
Subject: [libreplanet-discuss] Diagnostic Software
Message-ID:
        <1368409159.15705.YahooMailClassic@web160102.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

A relative of mine had her Dell laptop fail on her.
It's an MS Windows 7 machine about three years old.
Among other symptoms, it's doing spontaneous reboots
fairly frequently. The built-in diagnostics didn't
show problems, but I don't trust them under the
circumstances. Since the warranty is long over, Dell
charges a ludicrous price to fix it.

I'd like suggestions on which bootable CD/DVD would
be the best set of diagnostic tools for a full
analysis of this thing. If the laptop is actually
fixable without major hardware work, and I can get
a novice-friendly Libre environment running on it,
I think I just might be able to produce a few more
converts to Software Freedom.

Bring on the ideas....

Joel




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End of libreplanet-discuss Digest, Vol 41, Issue 7
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