telophase | (no subject)

Computer still seriously b0rked. No idea when I'll be able to get online from home again. This weekend was frustration piled upon frustration and I didn't even get to get much accomplished because I spent all day Sunday dealing with this computer thing, with a net result of zero. I start the new job Wednesday, and I'm not sure how much net time I'll be able to scam there, so again if you need to contact me, the previous entry has my phone number.

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This is the text of the problems I posted to the Cepheid list - if anyone here has any clue what might be happening, feel free to jump in.

========
OK, I've spent this weekend banging my head against a weird computer issue, and
lots of time on the phone to Toby and over at Marco & Shirley's installing and
testing stuff. I"m wondering if the hive^H^H^H^Hlistmind can come up with any
potential ideas. Mind you, I can't tell you until tomorrow if it doesn't work,
because I'm currently unable to get online due to said problems. This is the
computer Lotus put together for me two years ago, BTW.

OK, chronological rundown of events:

Friday night:
Computer freezes. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary: working
back-and-forth in Flash and Photoshop to do linework for the next LRG
assignment, online with email and Trillian open. Once I restart the computer,
it says it can't recognize the primary master drive. I call Toby, who talks me
through unplugging the CD-ROM which seems to work. It works for the rest of
the evening.

Saturday:
I get on to print out something from email, so even fewer apps are on. It
freezes, and this time can't recognize primary or slave drives. Toby talks me
trhough a few things (I wish I could remember what, but you'll have to ask
him), and thinks it may be the motherboard.

Sunday:
I get a motherboard at Fry's (taking the CPU with me because I can't pop off the
fan over the processor, so I let the sales guy do it). The sales guy thinks
it's the hard drive, and while I'm more inclined to trust Toby who's done some
troubleshooting with it than the sales guy who's only listened to my
description, I wanted a new HD anyway, so I get one as well as the motherboard.
I go to Marco's and he installs the HD and the motherboard. It seems to be
working (well, after a while; this is an edited version of events). I take it
home.

Sunday night:

I install the drivers, get online, hang out for a while, then it freezes again,
and hangs on boot when it's trying to detect the IDE drives. Call Toby. Over
the next two hours, we try various things -- he thinks it might have something
to do with the processor speed, and as we change the settings for that, twice
it manages to work long enough to boot into Windows and get online for a few
minutes, then it doesn't. Arg, I can't remember too many of the details of
what we did now, but I'm sure Toby can reply and tell them much more succinctly
than I am.

Right now, it won't even get to the blue BIOS menu screen thing unless I unplug
both hard drives, otherwise it hangs on the detecting-drives thing, or on the
PCI info screen after that.

Any clues whatsoever? Whatever info you need to know, ask me; I know I've left
out a lot, probably important stuff.
====================

And why am I not worried about spending time updating LJ at work today? Because (a) it's my next-to-last day and (b) my supervisor's been on the phone for an HOUR discussing Jews for Jesus with a friend. I'm actually getting *some* work done.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How much memory does it have... Or, rather, how many memory sticks does it have? You have the new motherboard in there, right?

It's got 2 memory sticks equalling 1 gig of RAM. Yes, the new motherboard is in.

There's a couple of people on a mailing list I'm on suggesting it might be the power supply.

My terminology is going to fail me here, so ask your friend or the mailing list for better details...

Are the memory sticks right next to each other? Like:

 A B C D
+-+-+-+-+
|M|M| | |
|M|M| | |
+-+-+-+-+

Or are they like:

A B C D
+-+-+-+-+
|M| |M| |
|M| |M| |
+-+-+-+-+

I think they're supposed to be like the second one. If you have two sticks of memory that are 512MB each, they're supposed to go in seperate circuits -- that's not the word, but again, my terminology fails, something to do with dual channel memory.

Anyway, I ask because if you have your memeory like the first illustration, I've heard the computer has a tendency to lock up. By having the memory on two circuits, it's able to make use of the dual-channel nature, able to communicate faster. By having then on one circuit, it doesn't work as well. Anyway, that's the only thing that comes to mind.

Hm. I honestly don't remember what they're like right now. I'll add that to the List o' Possibilities. Thanks. :D

Jews for Jesus, apparently they're spreading. I thought they were a Midwest thing? And what's there to discuss? Basically a bunch of Zionist Christians trying yet another annoying way to convert others to their cause.

Sorry, but I have no idea about the computer. About the only time I've ever had persistent problems it was a virus, and that's obviously not the case for you.

I don't know what she discussed - I was deeply involved in ~~catching up on my weekend's LJ~~ working - except that she seemed to be interested in what they were and learning more about it. I remember seeing a JFJ bus at Fort God, the monolithic Baptist church near my undergrad school in San Antonio, but that's about the extent of my knowledge of 'em.

As far as the computer goes, just about the only thing that everyone can agree on is that it seems to be a hardware issue and not a software issue. And I'm *hoping* it's not the hard drive, because although I've done a big backup recently, there's still a few artworks that I hadn't managed to copy. Since I've been able to boot up a few times, I'm thinking there's a good chance that at the very least I'll be able to rescue a few items - the last time I could boot into Windows I moved all the things I needed to save over to a folder on my desktop, so at least they're all in one place.