The random crashes have been stopped by disconnecting the second monitor from the motherboard, indicating some form of damage to the onboard video card, which is not unreasonable if following my assumption that the power surge damaged it in some way. Another measure taken in the interim was to disconnect the LAN cable from the onboard controller. Luckily I had a spare Gigabit NIC laying about which I connected via PCI (which seems un-damaged).
Although it is encouraging that the crashes have stopped, the computer does still lock up occasionally on HDD read, which is a difficult problem to chase down in its own right. I shudder to think what else might have been damaged by "the event." Without a firm grasp on the full nature of the issue, I can't give it a more descriptive moniker at this point. It is clear that the motherboard will have to be replaced, although I am planning to do so on the assumption that the CPU and RAM are still in good working order (for financial reasons more than anything).
The problems with the file server are likely to continue unabated for some time at this point, since the motherboard replacement will have to wait on our finances to recover. For now, the system is functional enough. I feel comfortable in asserting that it will not continue to degenerate at this point. Once we have financial support, the motherboard will be replaced and the surge protector will be upgraded, two measures which, I hope, will remove all remaining issues with the system. In the meantime, I am going to institute an emergency daily shut-down of the file server to ensure the crashing (which appears to only occur after 2+ days of usage) does not compromise what remains of the system's stability.
No comments:
Post a Comment