hardware joy
Dec. 20th, 2004 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThus far I've been unsuccessful in getting the new machine to talk to the digital camera. I'm awaiting a response from tech support for the camera. Aside from that, the new machine is behaving splendidly so far.
My old machine (called, for the nonce, Bouncy) is now failing in the exact same way its predecessor (Doornail) did: after increasingly-shorter periods of uptime, it reboots and, more often than not, produces a blue screen. Attempts to reboot at that point always fail; turning the machine off for a couple hours and then trying again gets a short-lived boot. This says "overheating" to me, but it's not appreciably quieter than normal, so I'm guessing the fan is still running. All the usual precautions have been in place all along -- UPS, antivirus, automatic updates (OS and virus), safe computing practices... I don't get it. If I knew what I was looking for I'd pop the cases and look around. But I'm pretty clueless about hardware. (And we just had Bouncy open a couple months ago to poke a graphics card, so I know it's not full of dustbunnies. I don't think Doornail was the last time I powered it up, either.)
The questions in my mind right now are: what happened to Doornail and Bouncy, can it be reversed, and what do I do to prevent it from happening to my new machine?
Could I have a faulty UPS? Could a faulty UPS do damage consistent with these symptoms?
(Oh, and just to clarify: this failure pattern is not the only reason I replaced Bouncy; it's just the final step in a series of annoying failures. The CD burner hasn't worked in months... stuff like that. If it were just a hard drive, that'd be different.)
My old machine (called, for the nonce, Bouncy) is now failing in the exact same way its predecessor (Doornail) did: after increasingly-shorter periods of uptime, it reboots and, more often than not, produces a blue screen. Attempts to reboot at that point always fail; turning the machine off for a couple hours and then trying again gets a short-lived boot. This says "overheating" to me, but it's not appreciably quieter than normal, so I'm guessing the fan is still running. All the usual precautions have been in place all along -- UPS, antivirus, automatic updates (OS and virus), safe computing practices... I don't get it. If I knew what I was looking for I'd pop the cases and look around. But I'm pretty clueless about hardware. (And we just had Bouncy open a couple months ago to poke a graphics card, so I know it's not full of dustbunnies. I don't think Doornail was the last time I powered it up, either.)
The questions in my mind right now are: what happened to Doornail and Bouncy, can it be reversed, and what do I do to prevent it from happening to my new machine?
Could I have a faulty UPS? Could a faulty UPS do damage consistent with these symptoms?
(Oh, and just to clarify: this failure pattern is not the only reason I replaced Bouncy; it's just the final step in a series of annoying failures. The CD burner hasn't worked in months... stuff like that. If it were just a hard drive, that'd be different.)
Re: Questions
Date: 2004-12-21 06:02 pm (UTC)I'll transcribe the relevant blue-screen text tonight when I do the timing experiments. I suspect the resolution on the digital picture I took won't be good enough -- but since I can't get the new machine to talk to the camera, that doesn't help anyway. :-)
OS is Win2k Professional (with updates).
I hadn't considered the possibility of multiple fans -- thanks!
Environment: normal temperature (except in summer) is between about 58 and 70 degrees. In the summer I often use a window AC when working in the office; otherwise it's the ambient temperature. I'm not sure how to measure humidity; I'm doing nothing special there, so it's possible that in the winter it's too low and your speculations about static are correct. (I've never noticed a funny smell.) We have radiator heating (not forced air) and the room has an area rug. The computer sits on a desk, not on the rug. I've never noticed vibration problems; it's a reasonably sturdy IKEA desk. (So it's a top plus legs, not a full-blown desk, but it's against an inner wall and it's screwed together pretty tightly.) I leave the computer on all the time, so I rarely actually touch it except for access to the CD/DVD drives. I keep the blinds in the room down all the time, so direct sunlight isn't relevant.
More data tonight!