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List: kde-linux
Subject: [kde-linux] Using a kubuntu LiveCD to stress test a troublesome Windows system
From: Bruce Miller <subscribe () brmiller ! ca>
Date: 2012-07-28 18:57:52
Message-ID: 1343501872.64498.YahooMailClassic () web88616 ! mail ! bf1 ! yahoo ! com
[Download RAW message or body]
Please forgive the elementary nature of these questions. A recently-widowed=
friend has asked me to help troubleshoot her late husband's large and powe=
rful Windows 7 system. I am myself somewhat preoccupied with other matters =
and am sure that I am missing one (or more) obvious solution(s).
The major constraint is that her late husband was a professional photograph=
er and he has image files everywhere on his system. Even I can recognize th=
at he was a truly gifted photographer, but that his computer skills were no=
t to match.
There is exactly one USB backup drive and so far I have no idea whether the=
backup is complete (I doubt it) or restorable. I am being careful therefor=
e to limit anything I do to non-destructive testing that does not touch the=
hard disks until I have time to do an exhaustive search for all his image =
files and ensure that there are *_multiple_* backups of each. Moreover, I h=
ave just learned that he had performed a very expert calibration of his sys=
tem to a professional colour printer. I have no idea what or where those ca=
libration files are.
Since I almost always use Kubuntu, my primary resource (at the outset) is a=
CD of Kubuntu amd64 12.04 LTS.
The obvious symptom on the Windows 7 machine is a BSOD (Blue Screen of Deat=
h) almost every 20 minutes. This is so frequent as to make the machine unus=
able.
The first exception code on the BSOD is a memory location of <multiple zero=
s>1. Her tech support person (owner of a well-known local computer store an=
d fellow photographic expert) says that the single digit in the exception c=
ode suggests a hardware failure, probably on the motherboard.
I have been running Kubuntu from the liveCD for over eighteen hours which d=
oes not support the defective motherboard hypothesis. But my mind has gone =
blank on how to stress-test the hardware without writing to any hard disks.=
Google has not been a friend; on this problem, I have found it surprisingl=
y unhelpful.
So far, I have been running just a browser, a konsole session and glxgears.=
The latter will put some load on the CPU and more on the graphics subsyste=
m. Google did lead me to a sourceforge utility called systester which at le=
ast tests the CPU by attempting to calculate pi to many millions of signifi=
cant digits. But I cannot get it to run.
So my questions are the following:
1. Does anyone have suggestions on safe non-destructive hardware stress-tes=
ting applications? I have no objection to downloading and burning to CD a s=
pecialized distro.
2. Is anyone familiar with systester? ( http://systester.sourceforge.net/ab=
out.php ). The sourceforge site provides precompiled generic binaries for b=
oth i686 and amd64, both CLI and qt-based GUI versions. I have tried copyin=
g the binaries to /usr/local/bin/, chowning the binaries to root: and runni=
ng as root. But, running off the Kubuntu LiveCD, I get consistent "permissi=
on denied" errors. BTW, the LiveCD drops straight to a root prompt when one=
enters "sudo -s" into a terminal session. There is no password.
The system is an Intel i7 with 8GB of RAM. It is a 2008-vintage Asus P6T mo=
therboard; the catch is that it takes an LGA1366 CPU, which is no longer av=
ailable. Replacing both the motherboard and CPU will cost north of $500 and=
my reluctance to recommend that my friend spend that sort of money is heig=
htened by the last 18 hours of evidence that the problem is not with the MB.
The following is the output of lspci. I have tried running hwinfo, but it p=
roduces hundreds of lines of output. I will post only if someone finds it p=
otentially useful.
root@kubuntu:/usr/local/bin# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub to ESI Port (r=
ev 12)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Roo=
t Port 1 (rev 12)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Roo=
t Port 3 (rev 12)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Roo=
t Port 7 (rev 12)
00:10.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Physical and Link Layer Regist=
ers Port 0 (rev 12)
00:10.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Routing and Protocol Layer Reg=
isters Port 0 (rev 12)
00:13.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub I/OxAPIC Interrupt Con=
troller (rev 12)
00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management Regi=
sters (rev 12)
00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch Pad R=
egisters (rev 12)
00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status and RAS=
Registers (rev 12)
00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers (re=
v 12)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI C=
ontroller #4
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI C=
ontroller #5
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI C=
ontroller #6
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI =
Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Con=
troller
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Ro=
ot Port 1
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Ro=
ot Port 3
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Ro=
ot Port 4
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Ro=
ot Port 5
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI C=
ontroller #1
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI C=
ontroller #2
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI C=
ontroller #3
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI =
Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Contr=
oller
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port SATA=
IDE Controller #1
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port SATA=
IDE Controller #2
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV7=
70 [Radeon HD 4850]
02:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV770 HDMI Audio=
[Radeon HD 4850/4870]
03:00.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7231 (rev aa)
04:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controlle=
r (rev 03)
04:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller =
(rev 03)
05:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6315 Series Firewire=
Controller
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B =
PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)
08:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)=
] IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller (rev 46)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QuickPath Architec=
ture Generic Non-Core Registers (rev 04)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QuickPath Architec=
ture System Address Decoder (rev 04)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QPI Link 0 (rev 04)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 QPI Physical 0 (re=
v 04)
ff:03.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller (rev 04)
ff:03.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Target Address Decoder (rev 04)
ff:03.4 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Test Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 0 Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 0 Address Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 0 Rank Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 0 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 1 Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 1 Address Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 1 Rank Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 1 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:06.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 2 Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:06.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 2 Address Registers (rev 04)
ff:06.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 2 Rank Registers (rev 04)
ff:06.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 5500/Core i7 Integrated Memory =
Controller Channel 2 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04)
root@kubuntu:/usr/local/bin# =
--
Bruce Miller
bruce@brmiller.ca
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada:=A0(613) 745-1151
Thomas Pickering, a well-known former US diplomat, is quoted as having once=
said that, "in archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover=
the known." And this one-time student of archaeology is relieved to have f=
inally retired after 36 years in the Canadian foreign service.
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