{"id":75,"date":"2005-09-23T11:46:17","date_gmt":"2005-09-23T02:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2005-09-23\/75"},"modified":"2005-09-23T11:46:17","modified_gmt":"2005-09-23T02:46:17","slug":"how-to-waste-a-lot-of-time-in-two-weeks-or-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2005-09-23\/75","title":{"rendered":"How to Waste a Lot of Time in Two Weeks (or More)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n

\n\nAfter about two weeks of having my Windows XP box powered down because we moved<\/a> to a new<\/span> place, I found<\/span> that the computer would suddenly freeze – just stop it its tracks –\nwithout any kind of error message or other indication of the problem. The\nmouse, keyboard, and even front-panel power switch all became inoperable. The freezing<\/span> would generally happen overnight, awaiting my discovery in the\nmorning.\n\n<\/p>

\n\nWhat had happened since before the move that could have caused this? Well,\nthe prime suspect in my mind was the move itself. Perhaps something had\nbeen jarred or broken. Also, due to a move<\/span>-related project that I'll talk\nabout another time, I'd drilled<\/span> a half<\/span>-inch hole in the top of the\ncomputer's steel case. This, of course, created many tiny dust-like bits of\nsteel that could do some nasty damage if they found their way to various\nsensitive parts of the computer. I'd been very<\/span> careful about not letting\nthat happen, but perhaps not careful enough?\n\n<\/p>

\n\nTo top it off, since the move, I'd noticed<\/span> an alarm-clock type beeping\ncoming from the computer now and then. Four very quick high-pitched beeps\nin a row,<\/span> then a pause,<\/span> all repeating every second. It would<\/span> come and go at\napparently random times, and did not seem to be temporally related to the\ncomputer freezing. Sometimes it happened just as I rebooted<\/span> (which I had<\/span> to\ndo many, many times), and sometimes just in the middle of doing nothing. I'd never<\/span> heard a beeping<\/span> like this from a computer,<\/span> nor, in fact, from\nanything at all except an alarm clock I have.<\/span> When the beeping first\nhappened, I thought<\/span> that it was<\/i> my alarm clock still packed in a box<\/span>\nby my computer. I couldn't<\/span> really pinpoint where the sound was coming from,\nand it was quite frustrating. (Not that I needed<\/span> much to be frustrated with\nthe &@#&!^# computer freezing up all the time.)\n\n<\/p>\n\n

\n\nHow do you debug something like this? Here's what I did,<\/span> over the course of about two weeks:\n\n<\/p>\n\n

    \n

  1. Reboot, hope, become disappointed in the morning when I wake<\/span> up to a frozen,<\/span> blank computer.<\/p><\/li>\n\n

  2. Wonder if those beeps were indeed somehow related to the problem. I searched<\/span> my\n motherboard's<\/a> manual\n for beep-related info, and searched the web as well, all to no avail. It's as if<\/span> no one else had\n ever heard these beeps, either.<\/p>

    Meanwhile, the computer still froze up from time to time.<\/p><\/li>\n\n\n

  3. At first, the computer would freeze only when I wasn't<\/span> actively\nusing it. It seemed<\/span> to freeze after the screen saver\n had blanked the screen (as I have<\/span> mine set to do), so to see if there was some kind of message or other indication of\n why the computer was freezing, I turned<\/span> off the screen saver. Thus, I can see<\/span> the normal desktop even after it's frozen,\n and in doing that see the time it froze.<\/p>

    I do (see that it's\n frozen) every morning, and at random times throughout the\n day.<\/p><\/li>\n\n

  4. Wondering if it's heat related, I leave<\/span> the motherboard\/CPU\n temperature-monitoring software running. The CPU generally<\/span> runs 42C-49C,\n and the motherboard 35C-38C, both of which are fine. (I once<\/span> had a dual<\/span>-processor\n machine on which one of the CPU fans stopped. The log of<\/span> the CPU temperatures read\n 101.6<\/b> degrees Celsius<\/i> – 214\n degrees Fahrenheit and hotter than boiling water – before the log\n stopped with the computer halting itself.)\n\n <\/p>

    Despite the pleasantly cool temps, the computer still freezes.<\/p><\/li>\n\n\n

  5. Try a mini tune-up: take out graphics card, memory cards, vacuum\neverything, replace.<\/p>

    But, it still freezes.<\/p><\/li>\n\n

  6. Bad memory? Go to store<\/span> and buy a gigabyte<\/span> of new memory to\nreplace the memory I have<\/span> (bought at 60% of the price I paid<\/span> for the exact\nsame memory last May).<\/p>

    But, it still freezes.<\/p><\/li>\n\n

  7. I hear the beeping again for the umpteenth time, but this time the computer case is open, so I get<\/span> down and\n check carefully, and it turns out that the beeping is coming from\nthe graphics\ncard<\/a>. According to the little display on the card, the fan is rotating\nat 600rpm. The “600” is flashing, so perhaps that's the\nproblem? So, I take apart<\/span> card, remove fan, don't see anything obviously\nwrong with it, so go to store and get some oil, and douse the thing with\nit. Clean it up and put it back. Fan now going<\/span> at 5,800 rpm, and no\nbeeps.<\/p>

    But, the computer still freezes. In fact, it seems to now freeze after just a few<\/span> hours.<\/p><\/li>\n\n\n

  8. Maybe graphics card is bad altogether, so I swap<\/span> in a different<\/span> graphics card that I happen<\/span> to have.\n <\/p>

    But, it still freezes.<\/p><\/li>\n\n

  9. In my web searches I find numerous comments that reseating the CPU (simply pulling it out and putting it back) mysteriously\n fixed any number of strange problems, so let's try that. I go to<\/span>\nstore and ride the escalators up and down for half an hour (can you guess\n with whom<\/a> I went<\/span>?) and\nbuy can of compressed air, heat-sink cleaner, and heat-sink\npaste<\/a>. I really<\/span> super-clean all parts of the computer (blowing and\nvacuuming), then clean CPU and heatsink with special two-step cleaner, then\nreseat CPU and reapply heat-sink paste and heat sink. I notice<\/span> that the\ncomputer now runs with the CPU about 5C cooler.\n <\/p>

    But, it still freezes.<\/p><\/li>\n\n

  10. Maybe it's not the hardware? Before swapping out the last plausible component (the $120 motherboard), I wonder<\/span> if it's\n the Microsoft software updates that had been installed when I booted<\/span> after the move (two weeks worth had accumulated, and had been\n installed the day I re<\/span>-set-up the computer).<\/p>\n\n

    To test that theory, I'll try running a different<\/span> (non-Microsoft)\noperating system. So, I boot with<\/span> a Knoppix<\/a> CD that a friend<\/span><\/a> happened to give me last\nyear.<\/p>\n\n\n

    Knoppix is a free Linux distribution on CD\nwhich is wholly self-contained. It boots<\/span> from CD and creates a RAM<\/span> disk. It never<\/span> uses the disks that might be attached to the computer. I was using<\/span> an\nodd graphics card (PCI-based DVI) hooked to an LCD monitor (Dell's\nwonderful 20\"), and so perhaps that's why it didn't autodetect the\ndisplay parameters correctly. I had to<\/span> boot with an xmodule=fbdev<\/b>\nparameter, and then it was fine.<\/p>

    \n\n\n After booting Knoppix, you find that it has an absolutely\namazing<\/b> amount of software available (all from the one compressed CD). I'd never<\/span> actually used Knoppix before, so was suitably impressed.<\/p>

    I\nget a bunch of software running to try to make the computer busy, and leave\nit running overnight. I ended<\/span> up getting a cold,<\/span> so overnight turned into a\nday<\/span> and a half.<\/span><\/p>

    In the end, the computer didn't<\/b> freeze.\n\n <\/p><\/li>\n\n

  11. The fact that the computer didn't freeze while running Linux\ndidn't prove conclusively that it was a problem<\/span> with the prior (Windows)\nsoftware. Perhaps what was running during the Linux time didn't “tickle”\nwhatever hardware problem I was<\/span> having, for example. However, the Linux test\ncertainly gave strength to the idea that the freezes were due to the recent\nMicrosoft software upgrades.<\/p>\n\n

    So, I got my<\/span> Genuine™ Microsoft™ Windows™ CD™ and\n tried doing a “repair install”. This rolls back my OS software\nto whatever old stuff is on the CD. It was during<\/span> this episode that I had<\/span>\n to run out to buy a new<\/span> mouse<\/a> due to continuing Microsoft ineptness.\n <\/p>

    I rebooted and it didn't freeze<\/b>.<\/p><\/li>\n\n

  12. After running for a few days like this, I shut down<\/span> and reattached\nthe three (non-boot) disks that I'd detached prior to doing the repair install.\n <\/p>

    It still didn't freeze.<\/p>

    Victory!<\/p><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    At the moment, my CPU is running at 36C and the motherboard at 31C,\nboth extremely good. I now have<\/span> 2 gig of memory, and a dust<\/span>-free\ncomputer.<\/p>

    Microsoft Update tells me that there are a bazillion<\/span>\nsecurity updates waiting to be installed, but I'll ignore them; my computer\nis behind a properly<\/span>-managed firewall, and I don't<\/span> use Microsoft's Internet\nExplorer or Microsoft's Outlook email client (historically, the world's\nflypaper of security bugs), so I'm probably safe from most security issues.\n\n<\/p>

    What I'd not be safe from, if I installed<\/span> the updates, are new\nMicrosoft bugs.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    After about two weeks of having my Windows XP box powered down because we moved to a new place, I found that the computer would suddenly freeze – just stop it its tracks – without any kind of error message or other indication of the problem. The mouse, keyboard, and even front-panel power switch all became inoperable. The freezing would generally happen overnight, awaiting my discovery in the morning. <\/p>

    What had happened since before the move that could have caused this? Well, the prime suspect in my mind was the move itself. Perhaps something had been jarred or [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}