Subject: Overheating symptoms?
By: Derek (IP: 68.232.90.*)
Written on: 31-01-2006 03:19
I am experiencing system crashes that I can't trace to any particular piece of software, or even any operating system. (I'm running Ubuntu Linux 5.10 now.) There seems to be a correlation between running longer and crashing, and if it crashes once, it is likely to crash again relatively soon after a reboot, so I'm wondering if it might be overheating.
Reasons against overheating: the fan is working, and the temperature on reboot is only 38 or 39 degrees centigrade; normal operating temp (based on lm_sensors) seems to be 32-35. I would guess that this is not nearly enough to cause an overheating problem. Also, the motherboard is supposed to shut down if the CPU overheats. I don't know if there is a range of temperatures when it would malfunction, but is too low to shutdown (I presume it would only shut down in case it was actually damaging the CPU or motherboard).
Another thing is the way it crashes: the screen freezes and doesn't respond to any inputs, including ctrl-alt-backspace (shuts down X) or anything else I can think of.
Questions:
 Are my symptoms ever known to be the result of overheating?
 Given my low temperatures, is it at all possible that the CPU could be overheating?
(c) If overheating is out of the question, can anyone suggest another place to look for the problem? I'm not expecting detailed instructions, but if anyone has any guesses, I would be grateful.
Sincerely,
Derek |
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