Article 6K5SJ re.: system not booting

re.: system not booting

by
however
from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6K5SJ)
Hello everyone,

<WARNING: LONG POST>

so, this morning my box didn't boot or, at least not fully.

Before I give details of what happened, perhaps i should point a few anomalies that I have been experiencing for at least 6mnth:

1) this thread https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...em-4175726131/ was never really solved or, maybe it was:
- one day my system wouldn't turn on at all and noticed a '67' error on the motherboard digital display (or maybe L9). Many conflicting theories on the internet of what BIOS 67 error is, depending on motherboard manufacturer. Anyhow, i asked a technician to have a look at it and all he did was: take the nvidia card out, replace it with an old SVGA and the BIOS seemed to ram-out of that vicious loop. The system booted also after the original nvidia card was put back and "reboot-insead-of-switch-off disappeared (both when switching OFF with 'halt' and/or 'Application Menu' commands). After, I had my box up and running fast and flawless for another 2-3mnth until...

2) a couple of the front USB ports stopped working,

3) the 'kioslave error' started appearing out of no-where causing continuous system crashes... and continued even after I cleared the ~/...kioslave file

4) random error 67 and no-boot, but this time I thought that i knew what to do: remove the nvidia card, perhaps also 1 RAM-stick, power it up and break that memory loop. And it worked.

5) in the last week, or two, apps that were meant to stay hidden on System Tray disappeared and I had to open them manually; then reboot and back they were nicely hidden on the System Tray. Something i noticed last night was that Kmail disappeared from system tray and I thought: argh..., it will return at the next boot.

So, this morning:

a) Slackware loaded in VGA mode (big letters only on one screen; usually after a few seconds i have the boot msg on both screens)
b) at the end of this anomalous boot, i DID NOT have keyboard nor mouse,
c) rebooted.... same response,
d) for a second I doubted whether I upgraded the system last night and forgot to run LILO so, although i was pretty sure that i hadn't, I booted a Slackware current CD and proceeded to the usual repair as in 'when i forget to run LILO'; mounted the system partition /dev/sda1 on /mnt and run pktool to reinstall LILO. Success!
restart the system: no changes! Slackware is still booting in vga mode with no drivers.
e) I decided to open the box and do the usual trick: take the nvidia card out power it up and restore it. This time when i turned the machine on, it would not boot at all and the ugly BIOS 67 error appeared again
f) repeated e). no luck.
g) repeated e) this time removing all RAM sticks too, NO LUCK. Powering the machine would almost immediately display error 67

Time to call my technician friend. Now he has the computer and I am waiting for (good) news however,
- does anyone suspect, like me, that the motherboard has gone to heaven?
- I am not sure it is but I ask anyway: is 4 years an acceptable life-span for these super delicate motherboards, now? (i had a 15+ year old Pentium that still booted Slackware 14 32b like a charm before I gave it to a friend from west Africa, last year).
- could a 'misbehaving motherboard cause so many software anomalies?

I am not even going to ask whether anyone else has ever experienced something remotely similar as I suspect i am the "lucky one".

Any additional thoughts?

Apologies for the long post.
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