Hardware Failure Troubleshooting

[TheKid7]

I am having possible hardware failure problem(s) with one of my PC's which is about 4 years old. I use the PC for installing various Linux Distros when new ones are released.

A couple of months ago I started getting an error during the copy to hard drive installation step. The error message said something about my DVD-RW drive having problems (It was suggested to clean the lens.) or the hard drive is having problems. At the time I concluded that the problem was the ~6 year old internal DVD-RW drive and replaced the drive with a new internal DVD-RW drive. The problem went away until a couple of days ago when I started getting basically the same error messages and a few times I get application crashes when the CD/DVD is booting to the Live Desktop.

I decided to boot the installation DVD from an External USB 2.0 DVD-RW drive. The same problem occurred during the installation attempt. I am in the process of doing a Full Diagnostics Test (including surface scan) of the Western Digital hard drive with the bootable Western Digital's Diagnostics CD.

I burned the Linux Distro CD's/DVD's on another PC. I always verify the MD5Sum after the ISO download, and I always verify the burned media after the burn step (IMGBurn). I use good quality CD's/DVD's (Verbatim).

Does anyone have any comments on what should be the next troubleshooting steps?

Thanks in Advance.

[AlexC]

Originally Posted by TheKid7

I am in the process of doing a Full Diagnostics Test (including surface scan) of the Western Digital hard drive with the bootable Western Digital's Diagnostics CD.

Also check the if DVD-RW drive cable is well connected.

[TheKid7]

Originally Posted by AlexC

Also check the if DVD-RW drive cable is well connected.

Both the SATA Data and SATA Power Connectors are properly connected.

[Cudni]

did you check event viewer logs for any further clues?

[TheKid7]

Originally Posted by Cudni

did you check event viewer logs for any further clues?

The PC with the DVD-RW read errors is not on a Windows PC and the Linux OS is currently damaged due to an incomplete install.

[TheKid7]

It looks like my hardware problem is "Memory Failure". See here:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=312005

[TheKid7]

I had forgotten that someone who had upgraded their PC about a year ago gave me two 1GB sticks of Memory which he reported as good. I looked at the Memory and it is Crucial DDR2 which is what my motherboard uses.

I switched out the bad Corsiar Memory, installed the Crucial Memory, followed by a Memory Test which showed no errors. I just successfully installed and updated Ubuntu 11.10 with no errors.

I plan to return the Memory to Corsair for a replacement under the Warranty.