Daniel P. Dern: May 2008 Archives

Another memo to self: Check garment pockets for electronic devices before laundering.

You're probably not old enough to remember the classic Timex watch commercials where Timex wrist watches -- pre-digital -- were put through a variety of funky tests and "keep on ticking." (I'm not sure I'm old enough -- I have a feeling what I'm really remembering is Mad Magazine spoofs on the ads.)

Some -- but not all -- of today's electronic devices can hold up to this.

• My digital wrist watch has survived being worn in the shower and swimming pool. (I look for "water-resistant" when I buy them.)
• My first NEC MobilePro 780 (that two-pound computer I have in my oversized shirt pocket at trade shows) never fully recovered from my spilling a glass over water on it, several year ago... and a one-third-working keyboard really isn't enough. (Lesson learned: don't hold a drink, even water, and a computer at the same time.)
• Some new notebooks, like Panasonic ToughBooks, and HP's new 2133 Mini-Note PC, claim they can survive about half a cup of liquid being spilled on the keyboard.

After a large dollop of shampoo got spilled on a SanDisk Sansa C1 flash MP3 player, it stopped working. It "wakes up," but the controls don't work beyond that. (I haven't yet given up hope of resurrecting it, though.)

But, I'm happy to report, my little SanDisk Sansa radio/MP3 player has survived a cycle through the washing machine.

When it comes to taking care of our own computers, it's easy to be smart, but even easier to be stupid. Even those of us who write about this stuff can be guilty of doing stupid, computer-killing things. Including yours truly.

And thereby hangs my admittedly long tale.

Aging Computers Get The Blue(Screen)s

I just picked up my new desktop computer will be ready on Friday. And not a day too soon, possibly thanks to my misplaced confidence, because where I briefly was back up to two working, albeit old, Windows XP desktop computers, I'm down to one, and that one's exhibiting new buggy behavior.

I bought my Athlon 1700 desktop back in Fall of 2001, and the Athlon 1800 early in 2003, from PCs For Everyone, a local (Boston-area) "white box" shop patronized by businesses, universities, along with Linux hackers, gamers, and folks like me who simply want a good computer.

(Here's articles I've written about this company, and more generally about buying from white box shops.)

They were, at the time, good, fairly priced systems configured more or less with "sweet spot" mid-range processors, a gig of RAM, separate hard drives for software versus data, and minor other frills, like nice lightweight Lian Li cases. Nothing fancy, just good systems for running the office and Internet apps I earn my living as a writer with. Although the Lian Li cases are easy-open, for the most part I've kept them shut, other than installing an eSata PCI card in one, a year or so ago.

According to most IT folks I've talked to in the course of researching articles, the standard "refresh" (replace with new) cycle for business desktop computers is three to four years.

So by any standards, my systems are, if not obsolete, entitled to be scheduled for replacement. However, up until this past year, they've continued to work. I've taken each in for service once or twice, over the years, resulting in a few hundred dollars of component replacement or upgrade, but, until this past year, they still worked fine.

But over the past year, my desktops had been so unusable for a few months that I was running off my notebook -- an IBM ThinkPad, itself at least four years old.

One system, nominally my "production" (do work on) system, was getting turgid to the point of uselessness -- it would boot up to Windows, but then often be slow, or incredibly slow. And the virus protection part of Zone Alarm kept turning itself off, a bad sign. Possibly I had an infestation of malware. Or Windows "Registry rot," or other inadequate Windows upkeep and maintenance.

The other system would boot up into Windows -- and then promptly crash, power cycle and reboot back into Windows, and then crash again.

I'd already been window-shopping a new desktop from PCs For Everyone. One project had me trying to run the Second Life client unsuccessfully -- it installed and ran once or twice, but on subsequent tries, it said, "not enough resources" or something like that.

And since I want to run XP Pro, not Vista, now -- before the end of June 2008 -- is the time to buy. (Vista Business offers a "downgrade" option that would let me switch over, but I've decided to get my desktop with what I plan to run, and worry about "upgrading" to Vista later -- or never.)

No Good Repair Goes Unpunished

I did manage to get both working again, to my pleasant surprise. At least, that's what I thought.

The one that was cyclically power/boot cycling worked fine, I discovered, once I removed one of its 512MB memory modules. (A lucky guess, on my part, as it turned out.)

The other machine -- which would finish booting into Windows and stay up, turgidly, proved t be fine in Safe Mode. So rather than attempt to reload Windows, I used Windows' System Restore utility to go back to the oldest Restore Point I had. This seemed to resolve the problem.

Voila, two working systems again.

Or so I thought.

Since my Test machine was down from 1GB to 512MB, I brought the apparently dead stick over to Micro Center (a computer-store chain which I like I lot), where the sales rep helped me a 1GB stick for $44 after rebate -- or 2 512's for a few dollars less. These both went into my Test machine, which seemed happier (faster).

Foolishly encouraged by my success in swapping RAM memory sticks, I said to myself, "I've got 1.5GB in my test machine, but only 1GB in my production machine... why not swap a module over?"

Even though the sales rep at Micro Center had made this point, I'd lost track that just because a memory module may fit in a motherboard slot doesn't mean it's compatible... and an incompatible memory module can have bad results.

My initial memory swapping simply caused my production machine to not boot, just beep. (These beeps have meaning, but I don't have the information at hand.)

The first memory slot had a lot of dust in and around it, so I took my can of compressed computer-cleaning air and gave it a zetz (little shot) of air, before replacing the module.

The computer didn't work any better... but now I noticed a sudden bad smell. So I turned the computer off, and the next day, I toted the computer over to PCs For Everyone's service location a half hour or so away in Norwood. (Their Cambridge sales/service location closed down a year or so ago, and, depending on traffic, wouldn't have been less time to get to.)

Three hours after I dropped the machine off, I got the bad news: fried motherboard.

Given the age of the computer, they didn't have any replacement parts to sell me. I might be able to find a motherboard and CPU somewhere like eBay, but that was a crap shoot.

Ah well, I still have one working desktop computer, I reassured myself. And I've been planning to buy a new desktop anyway, I've just been delaying it because the technology writing biz has been a little slower than I'd like lately.

Except, I discovered, that when I plug any USB storage, the machine again goes through the crash, reboot to windows, repeat cycle like it had before I replaced the bad memory stick. Not if I plugged in my USB printer, or my Bluetooth headset's USB charger cable... but for USB flash drives, a USB hard drive or CD burner (each of which have their own power supply, note), either to a USB port on the computer, or to the USB peripherals port on my KVM switch. Go figure.

This means, among other things, I can't do local external backups. Since I'm using an online backup service Data Deposit Box (see my review in eWeek) for nearly a year now, that's not a big deal, but it also means I can't download pictures from my digital camera, or retrieve/save files to USB sticks, or add stuff to my MP3 player.

So I ordered my new computer (more on this in future post), which I had pretty much spec'd out. And when I go pick it up on Friday, I'll bring this working-but-troubled-one in for service, to see if it can be (affordably) fixed. (Fortunately, my current desktops have 'lifetime free labor' service warrantees.)

With luck -- and, hopefully no more than a hundred bucks or so replacement parts -- I'll end up with one fixed aging desktop, plus a lovely new one. (I'll post a note on what the problem, and solution, with the second machine turned out to be.)

Like I said, both my desktops are are old enough that they've more than earned out, and entitled to go to the computer equivalent of Doctor Dolittle's Home For Retired Cab-Horses.

I'm sad that one or both will be retired. I'm annoyed at myself for possibly -- probably -- hastening one's demise and retirement, but at seven years, it's entirely possible the mobo immolation was coincidental (although coincidence is always to be distrusted). And it's entirely possible that this or something else would have gone wrong soon.

The reality is that I should have bought a new machine sooner, because the toll on my productivity outweighed the "savings" of not making the purchase sooner than I might otherwise. (I was also waiting until mid/late-April, for availability of Intel's new Penryn CPUs, admittedly.)

So, I'll be picking up my new desktop computer at the end of this week.

Lessons (re)-learned:

• Don't fix anything that isn't broken, especially if you don't really know what you're doing. And just because a part fits physically doesn't mean it's necessarily safe to do that.
• Good backups -- local or online -- will get you through times of bad computers better than vice versa. I was able to download my data in about six clicks, allowing an orderly transition between machines.
• If working tools aren't working, they need to be replaced in a timely fashion, because when you're not working, you're not earning.