Introduction
Computing History
Desktop Incident #1 (How to open a 2 Gigabyte system file)
Desktop Incident #2 (A slave/master problem)
Desktop Incident #3 (The network card from hell)
Old Laptop Incident #1 (Screen Malfunction)
Old Laptop Incident #2 (Random BSODs)
Old Laptop Incident #3 (The blinking screen)
Old Laptop Incident #4 (The format-and-reinstall)
Old Laptop Incident #5 (The second format-and-reinstall)
Old Laptop Incident #6 (Do you smell something burning?)
Old Laptop Incident #7 (Bad battery)
Old Laptop Incident #8 (The dying CD/DVD Combo Drive)
Old Laptop Incident #9 (The dying keyboard)
Old Laptop Incident #10 (The first end
of the laptop)
Old Laptop Incident #11 (The end of
Windows XP Part 1)
Old Laptop Incident #12 (The end of
Windows XP Part 2)
Old Laptop Incident #13 (Ubuntu
Reinstallation #1)
Old Laptop Incident #14 (Ubuntu
Reinstallation #2)
Old Laptop Incident #15 (Another
busted power adapter)
Old Laptop Incident #16 (Ubuntu
Reinstallation #3)
Old Laptop Incident #17 (Yet
another busted power adapter)
Old Laptop Incident #18 (The
replacement fan)
Old Laptop Incidents #19 and 20
(Ubuntu Reinstallation #4 and busted power adapter)
New Laptop Incident #1 (The PCM-CIA parallel port)
New Laptop Incident #2 (More camera troubles)
New Laptop Incident #3 (Can you hear me now?)
Introduction
There are very few things that I hate more than when
an expensive computer decides to misbehave. Being the owner of three machines made
by Gateway, I have had a lot of troubles over the years. I’m not exactly a die-hard Gateway
fan, but I don’t hate them with a passion (yet). My first two computers from turned out
to be disasters, but so far the third one has been fairly well-behaved (though
not without its problems).
Anyway, I’ve always wanted to see internet pages
that catalogue the bizarre things that can happen to computers both for humor
purposes and to see that I’m not the only one with evil machines.
While I’ve used computers for years, my family
bought our first PC (actually a Mac) in the mid-90’s. It was a Quadra 610 that operated at 25 Mhz and had about 130 Mb of disk
space. Pathetic,
huh? My memory isn’t
too good to go through all the horrors that happened with this, although there
were many. Right now, the machine
will still turn on, but it is useless beyond that aspect. The monitor blew up while my brother was
using it a few years ago (literally…it blew up). The floppy disk drive makes funny noises
if you try to use it. I don’t
even think it can connect to the internet.
Our second computer was given to my mom through her
job in 1998 and was also a Mac. It
was a PowerMac that operated at about 133 Mhz
and had about 2 Gb of disk space. Still pathetic, huh? This Mac has long since gone to meet its
maker.
My mom and my brother now both have G5’s. My brother’s a graphics geek and
my mom could probably never learn to use anything but a Mac.
The first computer that I could call my own was a
Gateway desktop computer purchased in 2000 that ran at 700 Mhz
with about 20 Gb of disk space (still pathetic,
huh?). This still operates 24/7
searching for large prime numbers.
Next in February 2003, I purchased a Gateway 400SD4
laptop, which operates around 2.3 Ghz
with 40 Gb of disk space. This is the laptop from hell. I say that not only because of its
propensity to screw up, but also because if I actually choose to use it on my
lap, it is guaranteed to scald my legs and make me sterile. It also has the world’s loudest
fans. Yes, I said fans. It has two of them, and even with them
running at full speed, it still heats up to the boiling point of skin. More on this
monstrosity below.
In January of 2006, I knew my old laptop was nearing
the end of its warranty period.
Since electronics are known to suddenly stop working for no apparent
reason a few days out of the warranty period (which actually happened with the
old laptop) I purchased a brand new Gateway. The odd thing is that not only is the
processor speed slower (1.8 Ghz) but I also got the
EXACT SAME AMOUNT OF DISK SPACE AS 3 YEARS AGO! Of course, the slower processor is
really one of the new mobile chips, so it works more efficiently than the
faster processor, but in terms of speed, it really is slower.
Woes from the Desktop
The desktop had plenty of problems, but it is difficult
to remember them all. I saw the
BSOD dozens of times on this machine.
It also decided to completely lock up right when an important paper was
due on more than one occasion. The
three best/worst stories are listed below:
Incident #1
(How to open a 2 Gigabyte system file)
This isn’t
so much about something awful that happened to it, but a good tech support
story. My run-ins with tech support
are almost always memorable. Since
I’m rather computer-savvy and can usually go online to find out what’s
wrong, when I do resort to calling tech support it’s a last resort. I noticed that my disk space was getting
kind of low, so I started rummaging through the hard drive, trying to find
things to delete. I noticed that
when I did a “Select All” on my C: Drive and looked at
“Properties” I noticed that even though I told it to count hidden
files and folders, the total amount of disk space I had selected was about 2
gigs less than what the C: Drive claimed was free. It took a DOS file search to find the enormous
file which I later learned was the image file for Gateway GoBack
(which you can use to restore your entire computer to a previous time). So I decide to go to the “Chat
Support” option on Gateway’s website, since I didn’t think
the issue was important enough to bug the phone support guys with. I explain the situation to the tech and
simply say, “I found a 2 Gb file on my desktop
with the name <whatever it was>.
I know it’s probably a system file, but just in case, could you
tell me exactly what it is?”
The tech sent me a link to a webpage that had instructions like
“Close all programs”, “Reboot the
machine in safe mode” etc. I
soon learned that this idiot thought I wanted to OPEN the 2 Gigabyte file as a
text document! (That would approximately
be a 100,000 page document!) I
didn’t bother trying this out.
See, once your Gateway warranty expires, the only support you can get
from them is either to pay a ridiculous by-the-minute rate or to use their chat
support. I’m thoroughly
convinced that when a new recruit for tech support comes in, they give them a
test. The people who answer 1 or
more out of 100 questions correctly go to phone support. The people who stare at the proctor with
a cross-eyed look go to the chat support.
Incident #2 (A slave/master problem)
I don’t remember a lot of the details of this
one, but the basic idea is that I purchased a CD-RW drive for the machine (no,
it didn’t come with one) and tried to install it myself. There’s a switch on the back of
the drive that lets you choose “slave” or “master” and
the instruction manual told me to switch it to whichever one was wrong. Thus, all I got was a beeping noise when
I turned on the computer.
Thankfully, switching to the other option fixed the problem. This might have actually been my fault
since I had installed a DVD drive in the machine a few months earlier.
Incident #3 (The network card from hell)
By far the best/worst computer
horror story ever. This one
still makes me afraid to ever call tech support since I spent so long on the
phone with them and ended up fixing the problem myself. First a disclaimer: Though I mention
people with thick accents, I am not trying to make fun of the way they talk. English as a second-language is
difficult for anyone. However, it
is in a company’s best interest to keep its customers happy, and most
people are not happy when a tech support call lasts twice as long as it should
only because of the language barrier.
In mid-2003, the internet connection on my desktop
computer stopped working. I decided to give it a few days to make sure it
wouldn't fix itself. I also tried all the normal things like restarting,
running scandisk and all sorts of Norton Utilities. Also, I tried winipcfg to see what was happening. At first I was
getting a "Media Disconnected" under my IP address. I should
also mention that I had 3 computers hooked up to the net, through an Ethernet
hub. The other two still worked.
I try to use Gateway GoBack to restore my
system to a time before the problem had occurred. No such luck getting it
fixed. Plus, I'm not even sure that GoBack had
an old enough restore file, anyway. Here's a catalogue of the events that
took place afterward:
Talked to MediaCom Tech Support. I talk to some
guy and he says that the "Media Disconnected" error means some
problem with either hardware or software. He made sure I had tried a
different port on my hub and a different cable. That wasn't the cause.
He suggested I call Gateway.
Talked to Gateway Tech Support. I talked to a lady who was fairly easy
to talk to (you'll see what I mean later). I uninstalled my network card
and tried rebooting, only to find that I didn't have the proper drivers.
This led to an error message popping up saying "RPCSS has caused an
error in unknown". RPCSS is apparently a program that is for NT, but
shows up in some viruses. She suggested I scan my hard drive for viruses
and call back.
I scanned my system for viruses and didn't find any. She had e-mailed me
the proper drivers and I found that it was giving me much of the same problem.
So, I used Gateway GoBack to take my system
back to a time before I had talked to the Gateway techie, where I knew my
system was functioning normally (except for the Ethernet). Don’t you just hate it when the
techie makes it worse?
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers again, only to find that my
system would get all the way into my wallpaper and mouse, but wouldn't load any
desktop icons (I later discovered, it eventually would so after about 10
minutes).
I talked to a lady with a thick accent. We basically did everything we
had tried the night before, yielding the same result. Finally when I was
able to get into my system, I discovered under winipcfg
that my IP Address and Subnet Mask had changed to 0.0.0.0. I told her
this and she put me on hold and came back about 5 minutes later to tell me that
it must be a problem with my ISP.
I talked to a guy who told me that even if something was wrong on their end, it
should not be registering all 0's. He said it had to be something wrong
with the software (or a bad Ethernet card).
I spent the next 3 or 4 hours trying to get Gateway GoBack
or Microsoft's System Restore to get me back to a time when my internet was
working. First of all, it took FOREVER to find a GoBack
time where my system was working. Then I immediately created a restore
point (which I had to use a few times). I tried restoring my computer to
a time a few weeks before when the internet was working, but every time I did
that it would reboot and say it couldn't restore to that time. I read on
the internet that Windows ME had a bug with system restore, but I discovered
that I had gotten that patch.
I get another lady with a heavy accent who told me that she couldn't help me at
all since I had installed Windows ME on my system, which I had purchased from
someone besides Gateway. She suggested I go to the online chat for
Gateway, or call their fee-based support.
I finally get home and try her options. The fee based support costs
something like $2.00 a minute! I got online (on my laptop) with a chat
technician only to find out that my connection was running extremely slow and I
couldn't chat with him at a fast rate. He suggested I call the Voice
Support (which I had done 3 times). I've had nothing but trouble with the
Chat Tech Support. They had NEVER resolved a single issue for me.
I called the long-distance number because I didn't see anything for free tech
support other than that. I get yet another lady with a heavy accent.
She worked me through literally everything you could think of. We
removed stuff from the registry, removed TCP-IP, removed network cards,
reinstalled network cards, etc. On one instance, when I tried booting up
I got the blue screen of death even before Windows loaded! This caused
the computer to restart. Safe mode helped me out of that jam. Then
we determined that the file ndis.vxd was causing my
system to lag when I booted up. We tried pulling that file off the
Windows ME CD, but that didn't fix it at all. In the meantime, she had
told me to remove a network component called LinkByte.
For some reason, she thought that might be on the CD provided by my ISP.
She suggested I call them on another phone line. I told her that
since I was paying long distance, I would prefer to hang up and call back on
their 800 line. I did so. By the way, she put me on hold only once
or twice and only for a short while (you'll see what I mean later).
He told me that LinkByte is not part of their
software. He suggested I try another network card.
They tell me they can test a different network card for me, but they close at
7. Arrgh!
I talk to some guy who sounded bitter because he was losing his job at the end
of the year (to outsourcing). He has me do a clean boot (not loading
anything but windows) and then create an Emergency Boot Disk. I try
booting from that in order to reinstall windows and I get some sort of error
about a FAT/FAT32 partition. This error has been known to occur when
Gateway GoBack is running. He suggests I call
Gateway to see if I can uninstall GoBack without
adverse effects.
I discover that GoBack has a "Boot from
Floppy" option.
I get a man with the heaviest accent yet. When I called, I had booted to
my floppy disk and was trying to figure out what the previous techie was trying
to get me to do. The actual amount of time I spent talking with this new
techie was about 30 minutes. The rest of the time I was on hold so he
could "check" his resources. I was furious when he put me on
hold for 15 minutes only to come back and say "I discovered that you need
to have purchased multiple IP addresses from your provider in order to connect multiple
computers". Of course, I had done that several years before!
He put me on hold, yet again. Just when I was about ready to hang
up and write an angry letter to Microsoft he came back on and asked me to try
booting up with my network cable unplugged. Tada! That stopped the
erratic freezing on boot-up, even when my vxd files were loading. So, he
finally asked if he could have the number of MediaCom
so we could do a conference call. I talked to a guy at MediaCom who nearly guaranteed that it must be a bad
network card. As a side note, it
makes me furious when techies are so ignorant that they have to put you on hold
ever few minutes to ask a techie who’s more knowledgeable.
I wish that was the end of it. The
next day I took the whole computer down to Gateway and had them test it on
their system. It worked perfectly with my NIC, so I assumed it was a
faulty diagnosis that my NIC was bad.
I took it home that night and tried reinstalling Windows ME over itself.
Didn't work. Finally, with a tear in my
eye, I decided to format and reinstall Windows 98, which came with my system.
I called up Gateway and got another person who barely spoke English. He
told me that as long as I follow all information on the screen it was
guaranteed that my internet would work again. I did what he suggested,
then called back Gateway. I got a lady with a southern drawl who told me
that the guy before didn't know what he was talking about. We ran fdisk, and then formatted then I reinstalled 98. I
boot up and install the drivers (several more tech support calls to get those
to work) and it still didn't work.
The next day I made about 5 or 6 calls to Gateway. Each time the techie
was certain that what they did would solve my problem. Fortunately, they
would send me a big file to download and claim they didn't want to wait for it
to download, so they hung up. Otherwise, they would've found out how bad
they were.
The next day I took my machine, including my Ethernet cable, to SMSU to test it
out on their network. It worked like a charm. I brought it home and
it didn't work. I called MediaCom again and
talked to some lady for about 20 minutes (after waiting on hold for 30 minutes)
and she suggested I get a new NIC. Well, I got one at Wal-Mart for $15
and it works fine.
I HATE TECH SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By the way, one minor thing with tech support that I
hate is how every time you call in, they make you punch in the 10-digit serial
number of your computer. Can you
guess the first thing they ask you when you connect to a real person? That’s right, “What’s
your system’s serial number?”
Woes from the Old Laptop
I can’t remember every single thing that
happened with this machine, but I do remember a lot.
Incident #1: (Screen Malfunction)
This happened only a few months after I got my
laptop. For those of you who
haven’t ventured elsewhere on my site, I am a huge astronomy nut and I
use my laptop both to help me visually find things in the sky and to take
pictures. I had made plans to go with
a friend to a site that was at least darker than my home that night. Well, I get to school that day and try
turning on my laptop only to find that the screen wouldn’t do a blessed
thing. I called the tech support
who suggested trying the hardware reset button (something you push in on the
bottom of the computer with a paperclip that resets everything, including the
stuff that runs even when the laptop is unplugged). That did nothing, so they suggested I just
send it in. Over the next few hours
I tried countless times to get it to start up. It wasn’t just that the screen
wasn’t working. It was that
the computer wouldn’t load up at all. I know this because I tried outputting
the screen to a monitor. I sent it
in and got it back in a few days, good as new.
Incident #2a-2z (Random BSOD’s)
Going out to “z” for the incident number
barely does this justice.
I’m placing this a little out of order since I
can’t remember all the times this thing gave the BSOD, but now that
I’ve mentioned the hardware reset button I might as well mention
these. The hard drive on this
laptop had a major tendency to start making scratching noises about a year
ago. The mouse would completely
lock up, and then the BSOD would pop up.
Typically it would try to reboot but get stuck at the part where it
tells the hard drive to start working.
This was the screen that I would dread to see when I woke up and checked
my laptop. I would try sticking in
the blue gateway system restoration CD and repairing the installation of XP,
but most of the time it take forever and a day to load all the drivers (I think
since the hard drive wasn’t registering it would just load every driver
known to man), then say that there appeared to be no OS on my computer. Every time except the last time (described
in a different incident), hitting the hardware reset button would fix it. I should note that not every BSOD
required me to do this. A few times
a scandisk test would fix it, but most of the times that happened were early in
the computer’s life.
Incident #3 (The blinking screen)
Okay, so it wasn’t blinking in the strictest
sense of the word, but you know how the screen gets a little darker every time
the power cord is unplugged?
Yeah? Well, the computer at
first started doing that a little bit, and then it started doing it
constantly. Sometimes I would wake
up to find the computer with an empty battery. I found that the pin in the back of the
computer that sends the juice into the computer was extremely loose. I took it to the local Gateway store
(this was when they still existed).
They sent it off for repair.
It took 3 weeks to get it fixed.
I think the service sheet also said they had to fix a fan while they
were in there.
Incident #4 (The format-and-reinstall)
I don’t
remember a lot of the details here, but sometime in the summer of 2004, I
managed to get a virus. I tried
running Kaspersky (a free online virus scanner) and
that only made things worse. Then
next time I booted up the computer, it hung FOREVER. It would take 20 minutes to open a
window. Thankfully, I had backups
of all important stuff. By the way,
of all the viruses I’ve ever had, Norton has caught almost none of them. However, Trend Micro’s (free)
online virus scanner catches things Norton does not.
Incident #5 (The second format-and-reinstall)
This time, I was at my wits end. Every time I would boot up my computer,
just after the Gateway splash screen, a series of hash-marks would appear on
the bottom of a black screen. It
would gradually fill in a bar that went across the hash marks, then boot up
like normal. If this only took a
few seconds, I wouldn’t care, but it was delaying boot-up by 5
minutes. Once, again, not realizing
what I was getting into, I tried talking to Gateway’s chat support. It literally took 10 minutes for this
idiot to type out replies. This
person asked if I had done a virus/spyware scan. Keep in mind that this is something that
this is something that was happening BEFORE Windows XP loaded. After talking to phone support, they
said that a complete format-and-reinstall should fix it. It didn’t. Don’t you hate it when you
format-and-reinstall and the problem persists?!?! So I ended up running something called GWScan that searches for bad sectors in the hard
drive. It’s a very long test,
but FINALLY that fixed the problem.
Incident #6 (Do you smell something burning?)
This one is simply astonishing. I had just gotten done with spending a
Saturday at school studying with my laptop. I get home and plug in the laptop. The brick on my power cord starts making
a funny beeping sound. I pick it
up, and then notice that the cable coming out of it and into my laptop is
SMOKING. It makes a sizzle, sizzle,
pop sound with a big spark. I
immediately unplugged it. My
warranty was still active, so they sent me a replacement.
The battery that came with my system got worse and
worse as time progressed. It
eventually got to the point where the battery, when fully charged, would lose
all its juice in 10 minutes! Of
course, it was out of warranty by this time. A replacement cost something like $70.
Incident #8 (The dying
A few years ago, the CD/DVD combo drive started acting
up. At first it would play DVDs
only about 50% of the time. Then
DVDs stopped working altogether.
Then music CDs stopped working.
Finally CD-ROMs stopped working.
I’ll detail the resolution of this in Incident #10.
Incident #9 (The dying keyboard)
In the summer of 2005 certain keys on the keyboard
would work erratically. They
wouldn’t die entirely.
It’s just that sometimes when I would boot it up, these keys
wouldn’t work for a while, then after typing a bit on the keyboard, they would work again.
I still have this problem.
Thankfully I just bought a USB keyboard that helps me out when this
happens.
Incident #10 (The first end of the laptop)
I mentioned above that I bought my second laptop
because I knew my first one would die right around the end of the warranty,
which ended on
This might have been a simple problem to fix had my CD drive actually worked.
In many cases you can solve problems by installing Windows over itself. And as
a last resort, you can format and reinstall. But that wasn't an option since
you need the CD-ROM drive to do that. That's when I called Gateway for the
first time on February 21. Even though the laptop was out of warranty, the
techie said he could fill the replacement order since I had complained about my
bum drive a month earlier. He said I should have it within three or four
business days. Then online it said it should show up on February 28. I learned
it was on back-order. Then the date was pushed to March 3. I was then told that
it would be in the warehouse on March 10. That didn't happen. I called several
times the next week. Then I got a call from Gateway saying that my drive should
arrive by April 3 at the latest. I called on March 21 and was told that it
would be in their warehouse by March 24. Of course, that date
came-and-went. I called on March 27. The person said that they had received the
part and it would arrive in 3 to 5 business days. Yet again, that turned out to
be false. Of course, the April 3 date came and went without the drive. Then I
got a call on the 4th from Gateway saying that they expected the drive in 3 to
5 business days and it would get to me by April 17. I finally received
confirmation that it had shipped on April 15 but they had twice promised me
that the part would be sent out next-day shipping. It came
ground shipment. When I called to complain they essentially did nothing.
I did manage to get a $25 in-house credit for my troubles, which, of course,
covers nothing in their online store. The cheapest thing was a 128MB flash
drive and even with regular shipping, I still had to pay extra. By the way, this USB drive is HUGE. It’s at least twice the size of a
normal flash drive that holds 2 GB!
Thankfully, six weeks into my two month ordeal, I was able to go to a used
computer parts store and get a used CD-ROM drive to fix my problems. Sure enough, all my
computer needed was a Windows re-install.
In the meantime I got a call a month into the ordeal from Gateway's repo department wanting to know why I hadn't sent the old
drive back.
Also, I should mention that while I
waited for the drive, I tried taking it to my local
Incident #11 (The end of Windows XP Part 1)
Two weeks after I had reinstalled
Windows with the used CD-ROM drive and only TWO DAYS after the replacement part
from Gateway arrived (two months late), I was trying
to transfer an .mp3 onto my flash drive when the laptop completely froze
up. This time, hardware reset and
even reinstalling XP didn’t do the job. Even the external drive didn’t
work. It just made strange clicking
noises. I partially suspected that
my XP CD might be scratched, which could’ve been keeping me from
reinstalling XP, but formatting and trying to install Fedora from a flawless
DVD didn’t work either. After
a few days of moping, it suddenly dawned on me: KNOPPIX! Knoppix is a
Linux distribution that runs completely off a CD-ROM drive. Anyway, for the next five months, Knoppix was all that I ran on this machine. Sure, I lost everything when I turned it
off, but at least it worked as a backup in case the new laptop crapped out.
Incident #12 (The end of Windows XP Part 2)
In August 2006, I decided that it was
time to buy a new hard drive for the old laptop and get it back up-and-running
again. By the way, don’t
believe this crap about how internal hard drives are cheaper than external hard
drives. I paid $90 for a 40 GB
drive, while a few months ago I bought a 160 GB external drive for just a
little over $100. Anyway, I planned
to install both XP and Ubuntu. The only real reason I wanted XP was
because one of my astronomical cameras connects through a parallel port (which
my new laptop doesn’t have; more on this later) and my old laptop had
one.
This time I found that my XP
installation CD was indeed scratched.
Calling Gateway, they told me that they couldn’t send me a
replacement CD since they stopped making that particular type in 2004! I called Microsoft to see if I could
legally use the XP installation CD for my new laptop, then change the serial
number to the one I had for my old laptop.
She didn’t know exactly, but she was pretty sure that the license
I owned for XP on that machine was only for the system configuration that
Gateway put on the laptop to begin with.
So rather than spend $199 on an operating system that caused me nothing
but heartache on multiple occasion, this laptop is now
entirely Linux-based. The installation
was a piece of cake! Hooray (at
least until the next hardware malfunction)!
Incident #13 (Ubuntu
Reinstallation #1) I was gone for a week when I noticed
that I couldn’t log into my machine.
Turns out the machine broke itself while I was gone. It required a complete reinstallation. When trying to install a package I
screwed up another package and things went badly from there. Another complete
reinstallation. Incident #15 (Another busted power
adapter) So this one might be explainable, but
you never know. The adapter that I
received after the first one nearly blew up on me was damaged within a few
weeks, but it was my fault. I went
out observing one night and was in a hurry to leave and accidentally drove 15
miles with the pin that goes in my computer hanging out of the door. It is visibly scarred, but it still
worked for a few years. Then I came
home from Christmas break in 2007 and found that it wasn’t working. I got a universal adapter for way too
much and everything was fine, for a time. Incident #16 (Ubuntu
Reinstallation #3) I don’t believe it, but our campus
tech support claimed my Linux machine was infected with a virus, so I basically
had to format-and-reinstall to placate them. Incident #17 (Yet another busted power
adapter) So I get home from break in 2008 and a
few days later the laptop does the blinking on-and-off thing that this thing
suffered from a few years ago. I
figure the pin is broken. I take it
to a repair store to see if they have a docking station, or something like
it. Thank goodness, the guy noticed
that while the pin inside was loose, the problem was
that the power adapter was broken.
I thought about getting a new universal adapter, but the battery store I
got one from the year before said that particular model didn’t exist
anymore. I get home and decide, on
a whim, to try the broken adapter I already had. Guess what? It worked! For about two weeks, but I’ll
mention that later. Incident #18 (The replacement fan) Right around the time that the last
incident was happening, I noticed that the primary fan was extremely
erratic. It had sounded loud and
whiny for quite some time, but recently it was failing about as often as it was
working, then more. I tried opening
it up and blasting it with compressed air all around. Even though I started doing that pretty
regularly after an incident with my new laptop, opening the thing up helped me
get some major bunnies out of there.
The keyboard started working again, but it was still erratic. I decided to open up the computer and
turn it on, to see what the fan was doing.
It was like a piece of hair got stuck in the spindle. I bought a new fan and installed it,
having to take apart almost the entire computer. In the process, I got a good look at my
processor which was close to completely black. I gave it a good cleaning and put the
new fan in and it works like a charm.
It ran 15% faster and 20 degrees cooler. Incidents #19 and 20 (Ubuntu Reinstallation #4 and busted power
adapter) So my old system nearly locked up when I
had Firefox open (the program’s a huge memory
hog and the laptop already has its maximum allowable RAM of 512 MB). Sometimes I can fix this by remotely
killing it. This time I had to
reboot. When I boot up, Gnome looks
very bizarre and a window comes up saying that Gnome Power Manager is
broken. I try fixing it and find
out that it wasn’t the only broken package. When I tried reinstalling any of those,
it gave me the same crap. I could
still get in using a Failsafe Gnome session and a Failsafe terminal. It was then that the power adapter
decided it was going to break. I
finally buy a new universal adapter.
I decide to reinstall Ubuntu. I try a CD that worked perfectly in my
brother’s Dell computer a month ago.
It wouldn’t even boot from the CD. I downloaded a fresh copy and burned to
CD. It would boot to CD, but it
would just hang after I tried installing it. I tried a few installations I already
had of earlier versions and it did the same thing. I also tried downloading an older
version which also didn’t work.
Then I downloaded the alternate installation version which started to
work, but started talking about corrupt files at 6%. Finally I burned at the slowest speed
and verified the contents and it worked just fine. Boy was this awful. It was compounded by the fact that it is
darned near impossible to find usable help for any problem in Linux. If you get an error, you type it into Google and get six results, three of which are in Korean,
two are from developers forums, and one is in plain English, but consists of
six people replying saying “I have the exact same problem” and no
answers. New Laptop Woes As of yet, I haven’t had any major problems with
my new laptop. They must’ve
found a way to exorcise the demons from the 400SD4 model. That’s not to say it hasn’t
had its share of problems, but thankfully they are few and far between. Incident #1 (The PCM-CIA parallel port) The camera that
I take most of my picture with requires both a USB and a parallel port
connection. This was the last one
in the SAC series that required the parallel port. Darn. Anyway, if you buy one of those USB hubs
that has a parallel port on it, it only acts as a printer port which can only really
receive signals, not send signals back to the computer. So I learned I needed a PCM-CIA to
parallel port adapter. I called the
local geeky computer store in town and asked if they had one. They said they would order one for me. When it arrived (several days late) I
tried installing it. The
instructions were just plain stupefying. I don’t have them with me, but
here’s the gist: 1. Turn off the computer 2. Insert the card into the PCM-CIA slot 3. Your computer will recognize new hardware 4. Click next, etc. 5. Turn on the computer Notice that you
are supposed to install the hardware with the computer turned off. Anyway, I tried doing the two most
logical things: booting up with the card in the slot and just sticking the card
in the slot while booted up and hoping plug-and-play did its magic. In the first case, the computer locked
up at the XP logo. In the second
case, the computer just locked up entirely and only worked again when I pulled
it out of the slot. Going with
another manufacturer got the job done.
Boy I wish I had one of the newer models of the camera! Incident #2 (More camera troubles) This time when I
plugged in my SAC-7b and opened the capture window, I got the BSOD. It rebooted just fine, but then a few
hours later, the entire screen turned gray and the computer locked up. It rebooted just fine again, and I
didn’t have any more problems.
Then a few weeks ago, this happened again, except this time the screen
turned white and locked up. Also,
rebooting became a problem. It
would lag big-time on reboot.
Booting in safe-mode and turning off all startup items fixed the problem
(I hope). Incident #3 (Can you hear me now?) I noticed one
day that when I played some videos the sound wasn’t working at all. To make things more bizarre, when I
booted up, the XP startup sound played, but then nothing else would play a
sound. The mixer said that a sound
card wasn’t installed. I
tried uninstalling the sound card and letting XP fix it. Bam. BSOD. Anyway, once the system rebooted, it
reinstalled the sound card and it worked fine. Then a few weeks ago the same thing
happened. This time I didn’t
get the BSOD, but I had to restart the system. Weird. Incident #4 (My first format-and-reinstall) I can’t remember most of the details of this one
but I went into the observatory I work at and on the way I rebooted the
computer. I get there and open the
machine and see the BSOD. Uh oh. Using Knoppix I backed up all of my important data to a hard drive
and reinstalled. What was really
cool was that since I had a backup partition I didn’t even have to insert
my installation CD. Incident #5 (Dust-bunnies) I was using the computer when it turned off all of a
sudden. Hoping it was nothing I
rebooted. Soon it did it
again. When I tried rebooting the
second time at first it said a fan was broken. I waited a few minutes and it worked
fine, but then it did it again. I
installed some software that tells how hot the processor is. With one of the prime programs I run,
the processor was ending up going past the safety threshold (around 100 degrees
C). I called Gateway and they said
to get some compressed air and blast the vents. It was Incident #6 (The impossible-to-install router) In an amazing convergence of bad luck my router
started to die the same time the internet at the school was acting a bit
flaky. It wasn’t until I did
a continuous ping of my network card address that I realized it wasn’t
just flaky internet. I replaced the
router. It came with a CD that you
had to run in XP to activate the router.
I followed every instruction to the letter, but it still said it couldn’t
find the router. The Windows 98
machine was so archaic that it couldn’t run the software. I plugged the Ubuntu
machine into the router and in two seconds it recognized it and activated
it. Now, wasn’t that easier
than using their install disk?
Incident #14 (Ubuntu
Reinstallation #2)