[clue-tech] RE: Spontaneously rebooting laptop

[Stephen Herr]

(I apologize in advance for messing up the reply to a digest item)

Sean wrote:

>I'm trying to remember the name of a tool that
> exercised the computer in
> such a way as to highlight any cooling issues. If
> there is one, the computer
> usually locks up within a minute or two.
> 
> The memory test is still running, but if that finds
> nothing, I'm going to
> look for that tool.

The Windows based tool that will find almost any heat related issue
associated with the processor/motherboard is Prime95.  It is available
in a Linux flavor as well though I think that one is called mprime.  It
can be found at mersenne.org .  I have a program on the Windows
side of the world that shows current CPU temp and fan speed and
when I start Prime95 my normal temp of 40C shoots to 70C in less
than a minute.  It is actually quite scary how hot how fast.   I don't
know if the same sort of CPU/fan info is available off of your
motherboard but it might be worth a look and then you would
see if there was any correlation to heat and rebooting.

Just to be clear, Prime95 isn't a heat tool....  It just runs the machine
so hard that it heats it to the maximum any software would.  George
Woltman, the creator, hand-optimized assembler code so it wastes
as little processor time as possible.  He even takes into account
strange things like memory being written in an interlaced method so
he processes every other chunk of memory to speed the code
when it reads and writes to memory.  Intel supposedly uses a part
of the code to test the FPU on chips coming off the production line.

Stephen Herr