Month: March 2007

More Power

I’ve just installed the new power supply for the server. It had crashed 3 times in the time it took the package to arrive. So – I’m going to let it run for a while and see what happens. I’m confident that this will solve the problem – after all: my server has more than a few power-hungry parts in it. If it lasts over a week [I think 5 days is the record], then I’m going to claim victory over the reboot issue.

Junkets Are Fun

In other news, my group at work is going “down south” to Florida next week for a Summit meeting – meaning our enitre practice gets pulled out of our projects and sent down to sunny Florida to spend two days inside a hotel and not out on the beach. We get to stare at the walls and PowerPoint presentations while our wives get to frolic in the ocean. Sounds like fun, eh? Luckilly, we get to go a day early to enjoy ourselves a little.

So, this Saturday at Oh-Dark-30, we get to board a plane. It’s been a while, but I think I remember how…

How’s that for non-computer news?

Computer Configuration-fest

While waiting for my new power supply for the server, I’m working on Laura’s computer to get it up to spec. Now: when we took it out of the box, it had Windows Vista Home Premium, which lacked certain key features that we want. So we upgraded to Vista Ultimate. After a couple of days, we noticed that Laura couldn’t run the Roxio Creater Premier that we paid for, so I called tech support. Needless to say after much convolutions, confusions, and calls, we have had to revert the system to its original state. I’ve now done so and gotten the programs to run as expected.

The big test will be after the upgrade to Ultimate is complete – we’ll see if it changes the registration of the Roxio software somehow. Other than that difficulty, this machine is rather nice. Very quick, in fact. It’s now the fastest machine in the house [not the most powerful – that’s the flaky server, but the fastest].

My poor, little desktop is not likely to be upgraded for some time, but all I use it for is email and Quicken these days. I do my major photo editing on my laptop – which is very fast, too!

Could It Be So Simple?

I contacted the support people at ASUS [the manufacturer of the motherboard I’m using for the server] and they responded with a few tips. One of those was that my powersupply might be insufficient for the task at hand – and they even provided detailed product specs to make sure I found one that would be fine. Wow. I hope it works, because I’m about to order a new one – to replace my “new” one that I bought for this server especially. Ah, well, maybe I can reuse it for something…

Laura’s New Toy

Yesterday, Laura’s new computer arrived. She now has the fastest computer in the house. It’s quite nice. Now, I have to spend a little time to get the thing up and running properly and set up just like she likes it.

This new system will run the latest versions of her favorite video/photo editing software without even breaking a sweat. For you nerds: she’s got an HP m7790e with an AMD Athlon X2 5600+ 2.8GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD and lots of bells and whistles. So far all is good except for two things: 1) they didn’t provide any “backup” media – no install disks and such; 2) they installed 32-bit Vista on the 64-bit computer. Weird. I guess we’ll live with it for now. Better program compatibility.

Back to work setting it up… 🙂

Much To My Chagrin

It  seems I have NOT found the problem with my server. After migrating the data [all 400GB of it] to non-RAID drives and removing the RAID card, the server still crashed. I’m now down to two remaining pieces: the video card [not likely, but I still have to try] and the motherboard. The drives, case, & power supply are still there, but are not likely causes of the problem. I’ve even replaced the motherboard once already for this same problem. So, I’m trying the next item: the video card [it’s also much cheaper]. After the crash last night, I’m begining to wonder if the PCI-E databus is bad on the motherboard. So, I’ve found a way to crash it: simply defrag the drives. That kills it.

Anyway, I’m testing the video card today and if it crashes while defragging, I will know that the card isn’t the problem just like the RAID card really isn’t the problem. I was hoping, but… well, at least if it’s the video card, that’s much cheaper…

Data Migration

I have moved all of my critical data off of the RAID array now, well, all data in fact. It’s empty and I’ve deleted the entire array. Now, what I need to do is go in and pull the card out. Then, I’ll leave it up and running for a while and determine if it reboots itself. I’m sure it will stay up for a while. In the mean time, though, I’m “low” on space. I only have 40GB or so left on the main data drive. I guess I could use one of the array drives… and grow the array after the fact. I don’t think I have any other drives that would be big enough. Well, we shall see how things turn out.

You Know It’s Going To Be A Bad Week When…

You somehow accidentally flip a switch on your motorcycle battery charger that keeps it from being able to charge. The switch changes from 6V to 12V and was supposed to be on 12V, which I know in the past it was. However, sometime recently, it got switched over to 6V. This means it was unable to charge, and therefore unable to start this morning.

This must have happened when Laura and I cleaned the garage. And clean it is, I must say! Laura has been on a cleaning frenzy this last week, so the whole house looks spotless.

Luckilly, I was able to roll-start it and get to work. I hope I can get home.