[NMLUG] This box runs windows ok but won't run linux

[nmlug@swcp.com (Tim Price)]

>On Tuesday, December 12, 1939, Mike <mstarnes@nmteleport.com> wrote:
>recently reinstalled RedHat 6.2 and started having problems. Netscape
>crashes, either stops responding or all netscape windows close. Same
>thing when I tried Mozella. Or the system just locks up. 
I have had a similar problem with Netscape 4.72 at home. I'm running Netscape 4.7 at work on Mandrake 7.0 and it has never given me problems.

>When I do a 'shutdown -h now' it shuts down but then I see a full screen of >hex numbers scrolling by and the system reboots. 
I was having a similar problem with my home computer, except mine wouldn't shutdown or reboot. When I would do a ctrl-c the hex numbers would temporarily stop scrolling. When I tried "shutdown -h now" again, I would get a disk not ready error message and the hex numbers would scroll again. The problem turned out to be a faulty power supply that was suddenly losing enough power to shutdown the hard drives and processor, but not everything in the box. I was getting a lot of strange behavior out of the system, but the power supply problem wasn't readily apparent. The case and original power supply are 6 or 7 years old, while the rest of the components are less than 3 years old.

>For my latest attempt I ran fdisk to remove the linux partitions again
>then installed Mandrake 6.5. It worked ok for a day but now, when
>booting, it hangs at the starting system logs message. After a while it
>finishes booting. Then I log in as user and startx. It hangs and doesn't
>recover. This is driving me nuts! Help!

Mandrake is really good about running on all kinds of hardware. How old is your box and hard drive? If your power supply is ailing, your hard disk may be having trouble getting up to speed or varying in speed. 
As a some what related aside, we have three PCs at the office that were not put together very well by a local dealer who is no longer in business, thank goodness. We were having a lot of problems with Windows hanging (more than normal) and the hard drives would lock up.  We had to replace the power supplies in each box three times (one box may be on it's 5th PS) before we discovered the dealer didn't ground the components properly so the power supplies were shorting out. We're lucky that we only lost the power supplies in these boxes.
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