Why, what?

If it’s a hardware failure, why does it strike twice in a row at 6 AM? If the four NIC goes bonkers, why is that related to the sound card? If it is a bus, why does a freaking centimeter make a difference?

I don’t know.

All I do know is, that I am back online. Different four NIC, different slot, minus sound card. So what the hell is really failing here? The four NIC, the sound card, the board — or a combination thereof?

Definitely a combination. Something died, something is about to die.

I am online. For the moment.

6 thoughts on “Why, what?”

  1. Try the PSU.

    In my experience, when hardware that worked perfectly right starts to fail en masse without aparent cause, usually the PSU isn’t pulling all the juice it should.

    just my 2 cents. Hope it helps.

    1. Hmm, the power should be fine, not that much in the box, and I already removed stuff — but thanks nonetheless for the hint, Flávio!
      Much appreciated, I probably should try that. What’s really puzzling me is the shuffle of cards, both inside the box and with spare parts I luckily had around. What works boots almost looks random. No single change is sufficient.

  2. resource conflict, I’d guess. which physical slot a device is in can change what resources it’s assigned by the BIOS, and obviously what other devices are also present affects this too.

  3. Sounds like a power supply problem — either something popped on one of the cards (or the main board) or it’s the PSU. Alternatively — overheating?

  4. Yeah, something along those lines. My guess by now is, that the main board is slowly degrading, causing all these almost random symptoms.
    The weird things are, that it started out of the blue without messing with hardware. Also, the previous four NIC started preventing the box from booting sometime after removing yet another card. It did work for a brief period, there’s no direct correlation to any single change…

  5. if you’re getting that kind of degrading, then yeah, it could be the PSU dropping dead. or, check for dying (leaking) capacitors on the motherboard itself, or bad RAM.

Comments are closed.