[TriLUG] Its broke and I gotta fix it

[Ben Pitzer]

Well, I'd look at the IDE cable first to make sure that it's securely
attached at both ends.  If you pull it out, make sure that you put it
back in the same way as before.  If you have your CD and HDD on the same
IDE channel, try putting them on seperate channels (as in HDD on IDE1
and CD-ROM on IDE2).  See if your bios recognizes anything.  If that
fails, try replacing the IDE cable with a new one.  Lastly, I'd have
someone check out the drive for you in another machine.  The drive
itself may be hosed.

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 20:56, Jturena at aol.com wrote:
> This is rather selfish, but I have a system that "jammed" on me, and I am new 
> with Linux, and need to fix the problem, so was wondering if I could get any 
> help here, or not.
> (the machine is in the hands of a repairman that cannot fix it because he 
> knows less about Linux than me, but I was hoping he would examine the 
> hardware-- I need to get the machine back from him)
> Running RedHat7.0. Home PC.
> Had Gnome open; had Netscape open; computer was sitting 'on'; woke up one 
> morning in the wee hours of the morning and heard my computer "cycling" 
> through a short rhythmic whirl. Interface was unresponsive; had to turn off 
> machine to proceed;
> Turned back on-- during booting it read "primary master disk: None; primary 
> slave disk: None".
> Where do I begin?  By telling you what is in it? Ask and I will try and tell 
> you-- but like I said, I am brand new with computers. With me it is all a big 
> learning process. This one a man put together for me +/- $900. (think I made 
> a mistake. But I wanted to learn GNU-Linux. Looks like I am going to get the 
> lessons I need).
> (and could it have anything to do with the computer going to "screensaver" 
> and running through that entire file, and then whigging out? that would not 
> explain the 'lost' disks, though)
> Anyway, as always, I would appreciate any comments.
> Thanks in advance, for at least the opportunity to post this.
> Jim