Hello all,
I have an IBM NetVista 2257 (2001 model) Pentium III 1GHz based machine. It started behaving rather strangely in the last three weeks as it rebooted all of a sudden(a few times in a week) without a warning. It runs WinXP Pro, fully patched.
A few days ago, when it rebooted a few times before it even finished starting Windows I got annoyed and tried to find the cause. Here is my take:
- Power supply: Works, because I was able to run memtest for 97hrs straight! (wasn't home to stop it)
- Hard disk: It does not seem to be the cause. While booting from a Knoppix Live CD it still reboots before it finishes the boot process.
- Memory: memtest gives me error. But then it gives me the exact same error with both or either one of the two memory modules installed. I checked with memory(2modules) from a working machine, and it gave me exact same error. Still reboots with the memory module from the working machine. So _it seems_ the RAM is not at fault here.
- BIOS battery is good too.
The inside of the computer is surprisingly clean and very less likely that dust has anything to do with it (blocking fans or DIMM connectors).
The only other reason that comes to my mind is that several of the electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard are either bulging or electrolyte has leaked out a bit.
Is there anything else I should be looking for? Any other reason that the computer is rebooting? Did I miss anything while debugging the possible cause for the problem?
Thanks in advance for the help, /kds