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Antisocial Hardware?

Posted by Cliff on from the it-really-shouldn't-do-that dept.

87C751 asks: "Over the weekend, I happened upon a deal: 10/100 PCI NICs for $1.99. I bought two and installed one in my Linux box. The box came up to POST, and the new NIC started looking for a DHCP server (which I thought was cute, if useless). Once that timed out, boot sequence continued to the message "NTLDR not found"! In an attempt to do a PXE net boot, the new NIC had -rewritten my boot sector!- Granted, a few minutes with a GRUB boot floppy set things right again, but why in the world is J. Random piece of hardware arrogant enough to frob my disc? Has anyone else been bitten by antisocial hardware?"

3 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Dingo Ate Your Boot Sector by rf0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Could it be that it did actually find a Windows server and tried to boot off that? Its the only thing I can think of as to actually build the MBR to know about NTDLR from a NIC. Nah can't see it happening

    Rus

    --
    Cheap UK and US VPS
  2. es1370 by moncyb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bought an es1370 PCI sound card for $20 to replace my ISA one. Works great in Linux, but the Windows drivers cleared the boot sector and erased my BIOS. Is this a new trend for hardware? ;-)

    This sucks because my VIA based motherboard has a bug which causes lockups during heavy DMA activity when a ISA sound card is installed. If you have the Linux kernel source, look in Documentation/ sound/ VIA-chipset for more info about this problem.

    Took me a while to figure it out. At first I thought it was a problem with a new hard drive--stress testing it would lock up the machine. Once I figured it out, it was obvious. I tested the situtation thoroughly. With ISA sound, lockups, without, no lockups. Who would've thought a sound card can cause problems with your hard drive?

  3. Power supplies by Jerf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Few people seem to realize it, but if you have a computer that seems cursed, suspect the power supply.

    My (now) wife's computer was toasting everything over a period of years. It didn't stop until I replaced the case, and thus the power supply in passing.

    Nobody ever seems to suspect the power supply if the computer is running, but I suspect that ill-formed power can toast modern electronics.