Comments on: Soggy Sunday http://www.technoprimitive.org/wordpress/archives/2008/04/27/soggy-sunday/ Rumblings, Ramblings, and Ruminations Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:43:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Steve http://www.technoprimitive.org/wordpress/archives/2008/04/27/soggy-sunday/#comment-3726 Steve Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:22:23 +0000 http://www.technoprimitive.org/wordpress/archives/2008/04/27/soggy-sunday/#comment-3726 New software/hardware is always fun. Strike fun, insert "interesting". And failures do coincide sometimes. Worked on my daughter's computer yesterday--the video had started dying on it when she watched a DVD. At least, that was the most common time it would die. It's a 5 or 6 year old HP Pavilion that has on-board video, but has had a PCI video card in it for quite a while. That's PCI, not PCI-Express. The board in the machine doesn't have an AGP slot, so my son (who got the machine originally as a Xmas present) got the PCI card for it. Well, I got to checking the machine, and it WOULD loose the video pretty quickly. This is AFTER I loaded the newest driver. So, I swap to the onboard video, and IT tanks just about the time that the drivers load. Hmmmm....move the machine to my little work area (work as in wiping/reloading/etc., theres' no room for actually doing physical work on the machines, unless I crawl on the floor) and hook it up to my KVM switch so I can see what happens. What happens is the KVM won't WORK with this machine, but the onboard video doesn't die, either. After I remove the PCI card, that is, which has a dead cooling fan. It was nice and warm when I took it out too--not burning hot, but with the fan scrubbing (I could turn it by had with a screwdriver, but just barely) it wasn't very hard to figure out the failure scenario. And the onboard worked on my KVM, just the keyboard and mouse wouldn't. So, back to my daughter's room with the machine, hook/boot it up and...the video fails at the same place it did before--going from the XP boot screen to the login screen. So, I take the monitor out and put in another one, and NOW it works fine. The resolution was only 800 X 600 on the onboard video at startup, so I know it wasn't a resolution problem. Looks like the PCI video and the monitor decided to shuffle off to Buffalo together. It's NICE to troubleshoot double-failures in the same subsystem, isn't it? Other than than, I didn't get much done yesterday--didn't feel quite right. Going to do better today, starting with cleaning up the computer desk I'm sitting at now. Yeah, I've said THAT before, but I am motivated now--I can't do a DAMN thing here it's so messy, so I HAVE to do it. Oh, well, looks like a good day for it. We're all off today, which is unusual--wife's day off, son worked Saturday so he is off today, and the daughter and I have a weather day at school/work--which are, of course, the same place. So we are going to have a family day. Whoopee! New software/hardware is always fun. Strike fun, insert “interesting”. And failures do coincide sometimes. Worked on my daughter’s computer yesterday–the video had started dying on it when she watched a DVD. At least, that was the most common time it would die. It’s a 5 or 6 year old HP Pavilion that has on-board video, but has had a PCI video card in it for quite a while. That’s PCI, not PCI-Express. The board in the machine doesn’t have an AGP slot, so my son (who got the machine originally as a Xmas present) got the PCI card for it. Well, I got to checking the machine, and it WOULD loose the video pretty quickly. This is AFTER I loaded the newest driver. So, I swap to the onboard video, and IT tanks just about the time that the drivers load. Hmmmm….move the machine to my little work area (work as in wiping/reloading/etc., theres’ no room for actually doing physical work on the machines, unless I crawl on the floor) and hook it up to my KVM switch so I can see what happens. What happens is the KVM won’t WORK with this machine, but the onboard video doesn’t die, either. After I remove the PCI card, that is, which has a dead cooling fan. It was nice and warm when I took it out too–not burning hot, but with the fan scrubbing (I could turn it by had with a screwdriver, but just barely) it wasn’t very hard to figure out the failure scenario. And the onboard worked on my KVM, just the keyboard and mouse wouldn’t. So, back to my daughter’s room with the machine, hook/boot it up and…the video fails at the same place it did before–going from the XP boot screen to the login screen. So, I take the monitor out and put in another one, and NOW it works fine. The resolution was only 800 X 600 on the onboard video at startup, so I know it wasn’t a resolution problem. Looks like the PCI video and the monitor decided to shuffle off to Buffalo together. It’s NICE to troubleshoot double-failures in the same subsystem, isn’t it?

Other than than, I didn’t get much done yesterday–didn’t feel quite right. Going to do better today, starting with cleaning up the computer desk I’m sitting at now. Yeah, I’ve said THAT before, but I am motivated now–I can’t do a DAMN thing here it’s so messy, so I HAVE to do it. Oh, well, looks like a good day for it. We’re all off today, which is unusual–wife’s day off, son worked Saturday so he is off today, and the daughter and I have a weather day at school/work–which are, of course, the same place. So we are going to have a family day. Whoopee!

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