Home PC’s RAM gave up. PC starts, and gives up for a second, and starts again, and the cycle repeats. Issue re RAM has been ongoing for weeks. Now in netcafe. Doing research on the best option to undergo.
UPDATE [19:58; 4/21/05]: Bought 256MB DDR RAM over at Rising Sun Computers (If you’re still a PCX stalwart, I pity you), and installed the thing when I got home. System didn’t pull through instantly, so I’m guessing its not just a memory issue, but probably something wrong with the motherboard. Played around with what I have, installed the supposedly non-working RAM, and after about a dozen restarts, now I’m online, and working with 512MB of RAM. I don’t think its a power issue (I’ve checked my AVR, but I have some doubts if my power supply can handle my hardware anymore). Boot-up process seems to have a really difficult time figuring out the memory, so I’m stopping the memory test, and the boot-up continues; this, I believe, is a major symptom of something, something I just can’t pinpoint right now.
and much later…
[01:36; 4/22/05] My brother had issues with frequent restarts. Having had the same issue with our old PC, I told him to disconnect the thing from the AVR, and set up a direct connection to a wall outlet. Issue resolved. Now, I’m not even sure if an AVR is actually necessary.
and much, much later…
[14:36; 4/22/05] Experienced the frequent shutdowns again this morning, with the direct-to-the-wall plug setup. So its not a power issue… and I’m blaming my RAM again, or maybe the BIOS settings I modified. Eventually, I could not power up to Windows anymore. Selecting Safe Mode, Last Known Good Config only prompted a restart. So, I took out my live Linux CD’s: not any of of the three flavors I have can boot to the desktop. Playing with the Knoppix distro, I ran a ‘memtest‘, which confirmed my previous guesses: it is still a RAM issue, noting all the errors shown to me by the memory test. Took out the old RAM, booted up to Knoppix first, it went to the desktop. The Windows bootup went perfectly, too.