Strange crashing/rebooting problem

[David Wolfskill]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 01:05:04AM -0400, Bryan Fullerton wrote:
> ...
> You didn't mention, have you run Dell diagnostics on the machine to
> rule out hardware issues?

While those diagnostics may well demostrate that a problem exists, the
lack of a problme is not demonstrated by a machine passing all
diagnostics.

In particular, on a previous Dell i5000e laptop, it was not until 8 days
before the warranty expired that I discovered conclusive evidence that
the (DB-9M) serial port did not work at all.

This, despite passing Dell's diagnostics with flying colors.

And this was because the diagnostics -- from what I can guess -- did not
attempt to actually transmit or receive data via the serial port.

So:  by all means, use the diagnostics, but use a suitably-sized "grain
of salt" in evaluating the results.

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Prediction is difficult, especially if it involves the future. -- Niels Bohr

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for public key.