Strange system lockups - kernel saying disk error

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Kaya Saman <kayasaman at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Did you apply any updates shortly before it started to fail?
>
> No updates! I did however, install unrar through ports.

Intuitively, that seems unlikely to have triggered the problem.

> I remember on other boards that went on me in the past with
> capacitor issues, a bunch of orange stuff starts leaking out
> of them when they blow up.

A leaking capacitor has surely gone bad, but the syndrome I'm
thinking of is more subtle.  The top of the can, which should
be flat, bulges upward a little bit.

Whether replacing bad capacitors qualifies as "quick" depends
on how comfortable you are using a soldering iron.  It does
generally require taking the board out of the case, which may
or may not be "quick" or "easy" depending on the case design.

> Also the chassis doesn't have any cooling fans either since it was
> bought extremely cheaply by the family member but not sure that's
> the culprit neither power problems as the system has run in high
> outside ambient temps in the past with no A/C in the room and also
> was working fine on the PSU installed with the 4 disks.

Fans that were never there can't have suddenly failed :)

Power supplies do fail occasionally, and not always in obvious
ways such as failing to turn on at all.  The output voltages may
be a little too high or too low, or they may be correct but with
excessive ripple or electrical noise; or the supply may be just
fine until a disk draws a current spike to move the arm rapidly.

It might be worth checking the fan mounted on the CPU heatsink if
there is one, and the fan in the power supply (which ventilates the
case as well as the power supply itself).