21.10.2011 02:12, Dan Youngquist wrote:
Even if the CMOS battery is dead it won't make the system unstable; it'll just use default values for everything. But if the clock is still keeping time, the CMOS battery is OK. The clock is the first symptom of a dying battery.
I'd reseat the CPU, memory, and all cards, then swap in a different power supply; sometimes a power supply will die a slow death and make things weird for a while. And swap in different memory if you have any, or if no extra memory, take half of it out and test with the other half, then swap.
I second all above. Exhausted CMOS battery would lead to the "CMOS checksum error" message each time you completely poweroff your workstation (i.e. turn it off and remove the 110/220/240V (whatever is used in your country) voltage from being provided to the power supply unit. Even when CMOS settings are lost worst problem you would hit is system trying to boot from incorrect boot device, incorrect settings for the operation mode of your SATA controller (might switch into "IDE/Compatibility" mode from "Native/AHCI" one) and some linux services hanging at startup due to not being prepared to find system time to be way back into past.
My general experience in diagnosis of "magical problems" suggests that the first candidate to blame usually turns out to be faulty memory modules (you had tested it and proven that's not the case - 6 memtest86+ passes are good enough to be sure that the memory is OK with 99% probability), then comes the slowly dying power supply unit and third one to blame are usually bad/oxidised contacts. If you've got some spare and known to be functional PSU to test with - that would be your best bet to start with. It wouldn't hurt in any case to eject and insert back CPU, memory and all other ejectable expansion cards your system is equipped with. Booting from live CD of one of the LTS distros and trying to work at that environment for a while would also help to distinct if your problem is caused by hardware or by software.
Good luck with your fight for stability, I know how bad is it to have faulty system.