Hey Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
coldplugs
Darth Vader
Offline
And I thought I was pretty good at diagnosing computer problems.
Here's the scenario:
My "big" computer has been running flawlessly for about 5 years now, except for a hard drive failure about 2 years ago. Since it has a RAID 1 setup, this was an easy fix. (RAID 1 means it has 2 hard drives with one always "mirroring" the other. Sort of like a real-time backup).
About a month ago, it suddenly decided to reboot itself. This is always troubling.
In my experience, this behavior usually means a sick power supply or a mother board problem. A power supply isn't a big deal but a mother board replacement is a pain since I have so much software that checks ROM fingerprints etc as part of its licensing scheme. Replacing a motherboard would mean re-registering lots of stuff.
I hoped it was just a weird transient thing and decided to ignore it & hope it'd go away.
Over the next few days it rebooted itself several times. I suddenly realized that it was happening whenever I printed something on the laser printer, which was attached via a USB port. I turned the printer off and used the slower network printer for a few days and the computer behaved itself during this time.
Finally, I decided to try printing again. I powered the printer on, and the computer immediately rebooted itself. In my mind, this clearly pointed to a strange printer or cable problem, so I removed the printer and tossed it on the pile of old hardware up in the loft.
The printer was about 7 years old and has led a hard life and I really wanted a fancy new duplexing laser, so I used this as an excuse and went out a bought one. Hooked it up (via the network) and everything was fine. After a couple of weeks with no computer issues I figured it was time to trash the old printer and took it to the dump.
One day later, we had a power failure lasting about 1/2 second. The computer immediately shut down and the uninteruptable power supply stared squealing like a hurt animal. Normally, the UPS would aloow the computer to run for about 10 minutes on the battery.
Long story short - the UPS battery is shot. The printer was plugged into the UPS. The new printer isn't. Apparently, when the old printer started up, the sudden additional power draw caused the UPS to freak (a technical term) momentarily and drop power to the computer, causing the reboots.
I guess I blew that one (but I do like the new printer).
Here's the scenario:
My "big" computer has been running flawlessly for about 5 years now, except for a hard drive failure about 2 years ago. Since it has a RAID 1 setup, this was an easy fix. (RAID 1 means it has 2 hard drives with one always "mirroring" the other. Sort of like a real-time backup).
About a month ago, it suddenly decided to reboot itself. This is always troubling.
In my experience, this behavior usually means a sick power supply or a mother board problem. A power supply isn't a big deal but a mother board replacement is a pain since I have so much software that checks ROM fingerprints etc as part of its licensing scheme. Replacing a motherboard would mean re-registering lots of stuff.
I hoped it was just a weird transient thing and decided to ignore it & hope it'd go away.
Over the next few days it rebooted itself several times. I suddenly realized that it was happening whenever I printed something on the laser printer, which was attached via a USB port. I turned the printer off and used the slower network printer for a few days and the computer behaved itself during this time.
Finally, I decided to try printing again. I powered the printer on, and the computer immediately rebooted itself. In my mind, this clearly pointed to a strange printer or cable problem, so I removed the printer and tossed it on the pile of old hardware up in the loft.
The printer was about 7 years old and has led a hard life and I really wanted a fancy new duplexing laser, so I used this as an excuse and went out a bought one. Hooked it up (via the network) and everything was fine. After a couple of weeks with no computer issues I figured it was time to trash the old printer and took it to the dump.
One day later, we had a power failure lasting about 1/2 second. The computer immediately shut down and the uninteruptable power supply stared squealing like a hurt animal. Normally, the UPS would aloow the computer to run for about 10 minutes on the battery.
Long story short - the UPS battery is shot. The printer was plugged into the UPS. The new printer isn't. Apparently, when the old printer started up, the sudden additional power draw caused the UPS to freak (a technical term) momentarily and drop power to the computer, causing the reboots.
I guess I blew that one (but I do like the new printer).
