Hardware trouble? Me? Or ...??

[Roger Heflin]

Beartooth wrote:
>         My #1 machine (with F9 on one hard drive, and XP (to run topo 
> maps) on the other) won't do anything; it doesn't even turn its
> little blue light on.
> 
>         This *could* be my doing. Fool that I was, I went and
> fiddled with what I had in sys-config-network, or whatever its
> name is, and also edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Logging out and in
> didn't do what I was trying to. I clicked on reboot, meaning
> while I was at it to go into the XP drive long enough to update
> the virus software.
> 
>         It hung up, early in the reboot sequence -- just starting
> to shut down, in fact, iirc. Reset button did nothing; power
> button did nothing; I pulled the plug, and walked away.
> 
>         When I came back, nothing I could do would make it so
> much as turn its blue lights (nor, afaict, a fan) on.

This is really really hard to make happen with software.    Outside of something 
in the software losing its mind and corrupting the CMOS settings I have not seen 
software make a machine not do anything, and even in the CMOS case I believe it 
did actually turn on fans, just nothing else happened.

> 
>         The UPS is on, and running both the monitor and a laptop. I tried 
> moving the power cable to a different outlet on the back of the UPS; that 
> didn't help either.
> 
> 	Has the whole machine chosen this odd moment to die the death? 
> (They do always choose odd moments, don't they?)
> 
> 	Or is there hope? 
> 
> 	Btw, I don't speak hardware; but I have a very capable young 
> friend who is just getting into the business of making computer house 
> calls; I have emailed him,and he'll reply eventually.
> 

If the blue light is the normal power on light in the machine, likely it picked 
a bad time to die.    If it is not powering on MB or power supply would be 
likely and those also seem to be the most common components to die too, probably 
because they both have a number of capacitors, and capacitors have been a real 
issue in the last 5-10 years (designed wrong, built wrong,.....)

                        Roger