CentOS new install, Frequest hard lockups on x86_64 installation

[mchuntley]

I have just replaced my Ubuntu installation with a CentOS installation on my dual-boot PC.
I am swapping my linux versions as I am doing more RHEL support at work, and I wanted something to practice on at home.

I am finding that I am having frequent hard-lockups. The only way out of these is to reboot. The machine hangs on whatever screen it is on, and the keyboard is dead. If I toggle the capslock or numlock there is no change in the lamps on the keyboard.
I may need to call this something else besides a hard-lock. When this problem happens, the screen is frozen, with the mouse able to move, but not do anything.

This machine is fairly old, HP machine running a AMD Athelon 64 processor 3300+ with 2GB of memory.
It has 2 drives in it, a 160GB which belongs to Windows XP and an 80GB which belongs to Linux.
I forgot that Linux was handling the dual boot, so my windows does not want to boot at the present (Grub error 15), and I am still troubleshooing that.
I am more worried about the hard lockups than anything else, as it keeps setting me back in troubleshooting.

I put this issue in the general forum, as I am not sure if this is a hardware problem or a software problem.

Thank You,
Matthew

[mchuntley]

Last night I rebuilt it, this time with the i386 version. I was more careful with the grub settings, and got grub working properly as part of it. I now have the dual boot back. However, the hangup problem started happening on this build as well. Just for giggles, I reinstalled ubuntu 11.3, No hangups...

I will be building a separate machine for my CentOS work, perhaps something newer.

[pschaff]

Welcome to the CentOS fora. Please see the recommended reading for new users linked in my signature.

The symptoms you describe are very difficult to diagnose, even hands-on. I can only speculate that as Ubuntu works it is a driver issue. If you want to pursue it and do a CentOS reinstall, then please provide the system information suggested in the recommended reading.

[skolnick]

Hi!
[quote]
mchuntley wrote:
...Just for giggles, I reinstalled ubuntu 11.3, No hangups...
[/quote]
There is no such thing as Ubuntu 11.3...maybe you mean 11.04? Also, from the symptoms it may be a driver issue or even the memory. Try testing the memory with memtest86 (run it several times) and see if it reports something. Even try changing the order of the memory bars inside the box. Have you tried connecting to the box via SSH when it locks up? maybe it's just the GUI that frozes, not the whole OS.

Regards.