Bad computer day

Let me start off with that! What a day for computing. Yesterday, I had a hard drive crash on my desktop, then went to get my 6 month old laptop and when I opened it up, the screen went all pinkish and had horizontal lines flashing through it! Both in one day! Sheesh!

The desktop gave me a warning about a week ago when it all the sudden wouldn't boot up one morning. I ran a repair disc and nothing then all the sudden it did fire up. But yesterday no such luck. The good news is that it uses an SAS RAID storage system which mean that it has a stack of 3 identicle SCSI drives. They all are mirror images of each other. This means no info is lost if one fails. You just get another, and pop it in and off you go. It takes all three to run though so I had to order a new one to replace the blinking(failed) one. It works like a server.

The laptop I wasn't so fortunate although I'm typing this on it right now after fiddling with the calibration so that I could at least see a little better. (crazy pixelation) Tried to uninstall the video drivers and reinstall new ones but no joy. Got HP service (some guy in India) to help but we couldn't fix it. Graphics card is the culprit. They are sending me a free Fedex box and will repair (read: replace ) it for free. While cool, it's a pain as I have to back up everything because they will just send me a new one I'm sure due to the fact that the graphics are onboard the motherboard. Oh well, at least it was still in warrentee.

So that's how my day went!

Steve,

Listen ,Im not a tech guy but next time your having those kind of troubles, lean in real close to the mic and tell your computer if it doesn't straighten up right away your gonna hook it up to a welder and pull the trigger. They are terrified of welders!!!!

Have a better day tomorrow,

Waldo

Yeah, I build my own pc's or take hand me downs. The technology is hard to keep up with if you don't get involved every day. I wanted the video game Hell's Highway, amazing WWII scenario. Got the game, current video card not able to run it. Sent for a video card just adequate to run the game. Video card is pci-e. Motherboard won't accept pci-e. Sent for a motherboard, had to get memory with it. New mb takes usb mouse and keyboard, had to dig that up. Struggled through the assembly and OS install. Still like XP. Plenty of cooling. Game ran good for a while. Then, no video on start up.Thought it was the old crt monitor. Got a new power supply, then mb, then video card. Stumbled on the cause- bad memory stick. I use Corsair memory, lifetime warranty. Got the rig up and running, memory went bad again. They replaced it again. I have to be careful about shutting down sometimes I get impatient.
Wanted to hook up the gaming pc to a KVM switch. So I could avoid having 2 monitors. KVM switch shows up, vga socket in back. Monitor is DVI-D plug. Now I start looking for a DVI-D f to VGA m adapter. Gave up

Dann757 wrote:Yeah, I build my own pc's or take hand me downs. The technology is hard to keep up with if you don't get involved every day. I wanted the video game Hell's Highway, amazing WWII scenario. Got the game, current video card not able to run it. Sent for a video card just adequate to run the game. Video card is pci-e. Motherboard won't accept pci-e. Sent for a motherboard, had to get memory with it. New mb takes usb mouse and keyboard, had to dig that up. Struggled through the assembly and OS install. Still like XP. Plenty of cooling. Game ran good for a while. Then, no video on start up.Thought it was the old crt monitor. Got a new power supply, then mb, then video card. Stumbled on the cause- bad memory stick. I use Corsair memory, lifetime warranty. Got the rig up and running, memory went bad again. They replaced it again. I have to be careful about shutting down sometimes I get impatient.
Wanted to hook up the gaming pc to a KVM switch. So I could avoid having 2 monitors. KVM switch shows up, vga socket in back. Monitor is DVI-D plug. Now I start looking for a DVI-D f to VGA m adapter. Gave up

That's interesting Dan, cause I too was trying to run a WW2 vid game (flight Sim) that was a bit more than the onboard (laptop) could handle without lowering the settings. The graphics card crashed a couple of times and the very next day went tits up. Probably just coincidence but none the less?
The workstation has all sorts of power but the graphics are not that great because it was a numbers cruncher workstation. I bought a nice PCIe vid card for it but it won't run it because it's not supported! Leave it to HP. So now I will resell the nice card I bought on e-bay and get a "supported " card that the Z800 workstation will run. They are pricey because they primarily for CAD, 3 D design work versus gaming but should still game pretty well. 2g card. I was stoked that the HD crash was so imple a fix with nothing lost but the laptop I'll have to back up to somewhere because the one they send back will be cleaned. Can't back it up to the workstation cause that's still down till the SCSI replacement drive shows up for the RAID stack. Guess I can sign up for a free month of some cloud back up service or that KIm Dotcom guy has a new service that has free 100g storage.

Got to remember to take the extra stick of RAM out of the laptop also because you know the one they send back will be stock.

Waldo, Yeah a sledge hammer came to mind!

I had a printer screw up like that on me once. I fixed it out back. Fixed it real good!

SMITTY wrote:I had a printer screw up like that on me once. I fixed it out back. Fixed it real good!

Oh yeah, came so close! If they had told me the laptop was just out of warrentee, that exactly what would have happened. Just to feel better.

Today my trusty home-built PC from 2006 decided to lock up and have a fit. After checking a bunch of things I decided to throw in a Linux disc and run a memory test...lots of errors in minutes. It had four sticks if ram installed, two were Crucial brand and two were no-name. I pulled the two generic sticks and it passed the memory test with no errors. It is still plenty fast with 1 gb of ram, so I called it good.

No more generic memory for this guy.

Today my trusty home-built PC from 2006

That was a great year for PCs, none of that new-fangled electricity stuff, they ran on rice or even buck and burned real clean, I miss them. I never had a nixie tube ever that went bad on me.

its getting harder and harder to custom build your own PC's anymore. MB have list of RAM that supposedly works in them. Not always true. ASUS MB are ones i prfer, yet they are RAM finicky. built this one a 2 years ago(now old Tech) got 8 GB Crucial matched ram, supposed to work. Ran Mem test before install of OS, ram tested good, but when OS win7 64 bit installed, there was issues. Got new ram(G-Skil) a tad slower , same gig amount, works like a charm. Just need to get second VGA card to make it a true SLI video computer.

The PC in question has a ASUS premium board in it. Thankfully it was just a bad stick of ram and not the board itself.

Asus is the way to go...
Kingston has given us no issues yet...

I game also, video cards and memory and drivers are a constant headache. The quality of the components is truly horrible. Almost a sure bet that it will fail the first time through. Still setting on 2 sticks of faster memory, caused bsod's when I installed it and gamed.

Kevin

It really depends on the game or sim, you are running but that said, some require massive systems to really run well. The one I "fly" the most is IL2 Cliffs of Dover. It's very realistic and the planes fly like real ones. It is set up so that most of the online servers only allow full switch or realism. If you couldn't do it for real you can't in the game. It's a bit buggy but new patches have fixed allot of the nitial; problems. That said, it takes really honking GPU to run well. A 1gig vid card will run on medium settings at best. The hardcore guys have 2gig and up graphcs cards to run at max settings.
Here's a short video if anyones interested to show the graphics and realism. You only can go outside the cockpit after you've recorded the mission and are editing to do the outside camera angles and slomo stuff. This guy makes some good vids! I'm in a squadron with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Wuknd8Q60

Back to the computer. Lately whenever I shut the Z800 down and reboot I get a bad ram error and have to F1 to accept it. I look at he system and it show 12gigs installed but only running on 10g. The next day, it will return to all 12gig. I think it's telling me that I have a bad stick in there. Unlike most PC's that have 4 ram slots, this rig has 12 slots thus the 6 of them with 2g sticks. Have to screw around and see which one.

Steve, pull the sticks one at a time and run Memtest86 afterwards.

Rob R. wrote:Steve, pull the sticks one at a time and run Memtest86 afterwards.

Thanks Rob, That's just what I'll do. Seems to occilate between the full 12g and 10g depending on how it feels. There is actually 6 slots with ram and 6 more for extra. I could really load it up but honestly 12g does all I need.