Weird hardware problems are no fun

[Undertoad]

At about 11:00 today my entire room lost its networking - or so it seemed. All the systems appeared to be able to get around OK except the "main" one on which the Cellar runs as well as a few other critical things.

This happened a few days ago as well, and a hard reset of the system fixed everything. This time it didn't. Nothing could get the system to network although internally it could network fine. Three hard resets later it DID come back, after I pushed at the card a little.

It was another hour of downtime for the Cellar. There was a little downtime yesterday as the ISP suffered a power outage, and a little downtime the previous day for the same problem.

I'm gonna run out and get a replacement NIC just in case, but this is to explain why you couldn't reach here for an hour at a time recently.

I think the real culprit is static electricity. Everytime I walk into this room, I shock myself on my phone charging stand so that I won't shock the crap out of my USB mouse. Even so, occasionally it just loses itself from static.

[tw]

Originally posted by Undertoad
I think the real culprit is static electricity.

40% humidity eliminates a static electric problem AND makes a room feel warmer. Justification for a humidifier - or wash a towel every day and leave it out to dry in that room.

How a motherboard is attached to its chassis plate can make a system susceptible to static electric failure. Motherboard should only have a single point ground connection to chassis plate at a point adjacent to where power supply cable attaches.