Personal Blog

When it really is the computers fault–Part 2

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:38:22 GMT

After lots of swearing at people whose fault it probably wasn’t the Desktop PC epic fail was sent back.

The laptop came with a windows image pre-installed, which I didn’t want – but out of interest I thought I would check the computer anyway and see what was installed. I turned it on and was rather swiftly greeted with a blue screen of death saying IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL which is the computers way of saying that some driver has written somewhere it shouldn’t and it has protected itself. never mind, we don’t need this image anyway.

On to the laptop. This one went easy, it would boot from CD and within 5 minutes my image was up and running. So I logged in and all was well. Except it wasn’t. It greeted me with a driver error, which is odd because I hadn’t installed anything yet. Reboot and all is well, there were 9 unknown devices, so I connected it to windows update and it installed most of them, rebooted about 4 times. All is well.

Ran our software and it couldn’t see the DVD writer. I ran DriveInfo.exe and it wouldn’t list the DVD drive either yet there it was in Windows 7 bold as Brass. I tried to write some files from windows to DVD and it worked. This left me puzzled. Cutting a lot of googling and time wasting researching the problem including calling the US panasonic matsushita corporation about DVD firmware I rather by accident realised that the INTEL MATRIX STOREAGE manager needed to be installed. After which it worked. So it turns out, if you have Intel Rapid Storage Architecture then you need this Intel driver to make stuff work. It also speeded up the machine dramatically. It has native command queuing which is rather like asking the hard disk to pick up some fags whilst its at the shops rather than waiting till it comes back and then asking it to go out again.

Tested some of our software and noted a few bugs in it. As you do. I kept proceeding to fix them as and when but the machine crashed a few times.

The problem was a driver. IASTORE.sys Which was the matrix driver I had installed. I looked for updates and found one and it got worse. Then it wouldn’t boot at all. It got stuck in a windows repair on boot loop. Nothing lost really, I put it down to some issue with the software I had been messing with and some system files. And tried to put the image on. But this time, there appeared to be 4000 bad sectors on the HDD.

It got worse, after a fresh install from scratch, it was less stable than ever.

I kept getting a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT blue screen and the drive kept getting more stuffed up. I wondered if the drive was shagged. I left it scanning all night and it said there were no bad sectors and marked them all good again. Yay! Then explorer quit, then various parts of windows dropped off the machine. Then BSOD again. This continued for a few days and I tried everything I could until finally. I ran the Microsoft Memory checker. It failed to run it said there was a problem running it. which was very useful and yet not useful at all.

I got the thing to run the test at the end of the day and them couldn’t find the results! I found them a few minutes later in the event log – where else? and here is the result….

Which kind of says it all. Some part of the memory is buggered on this machine. I ran an in depth test and it passed – so its intermittent.

Later on, I recalled that the Box has the words “NO RAM” written in pen on it. Which was then crossed out and said “2GIGs”. Which meant that someone had been messing with the ram in this machine. I opened the RAM cover and found some cheap ass RAM from EASY-RAM.co.uk inside.

Basically this machine had been pilfered and the RAM had been swapped for the cheapest RAM that could be found.

What did we learn?

The main thing to learn is that sometimes it really is the computer. Hardware failure (except HDD) is very rare to me. And that software tests of hardware are a waste of time. Sometimes, the answers are there staring you in the face – I should have twigged earlier that someone had been fiddling with the RAM. If you machine is randomly unstable and throws these errors it might well be the RAM and the memory check might well say there is no problem.

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Category: Software

When it really is the computer at fault

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:16:14 GMT

I have spent the last 4 days trying to build an image suitable for our Approved Workstation. I built an image, I resealed it and deployed the reseaaled image on a VMware machine and a real machine that was very old. Both of which worked. I was amazed that MSDN were actually correct and it was actually hardware independent.

Then the actual PC’s arrived at long last from our mother company. Then the disasters ensued…

We ordered two types of machine, a desktop workstation and a notebook version, the idea being that each type would bring choice to the customer. Having done this type of deployment before I carefully asked fro TWO examples of each, the 1st would be for building the custom image and the 2nd would be for testing the deployed image would actually work on a physically separate machine. I asked for this because I have wasted many days in the past with error caused by machines that don’t exactly match. We were told we could only have one, and I agreed to this but covered my response with the words ‘if the image doesn’t deploy because the machines do not match, I cannot determine this without the requested machines. This is ok as long as we understand that this may be a problem’.

The first machine was a desktop and didn’t match our shopping list of requirements – so straight away we’d be on the phone, however, it was an opportunity to test the deployment of the image. The machine refused to boot from CD or USB so I had to resort to injecting the image direct via a SATA umbilical that I had made rather conveniently the day before. On boot up the machine worked and our image appeared intact. Yay I thought its all going so well, what could possibly go wrong. Well quite a lot, the machine wouldn’t register USB devices. We tried a couple and nothing. (I’d had a dud USB stick the week before). Jon put his favourite stick in the front slots, nothing, then we tried the back slots and a hot smell and a dead USB stick was the result. When we opened the case, it looked like there had been a small fire in it. After a bit of CSI-Scyron the PC case was not new, and the loom for the front panel in the cases previous life had obviously been shorted probably via a screw to the case and burned out the last motherboard and blown the front panel PCB. In turn. after they fitted the new board, it then blew that, which toasted our USB devices and then after putting a toasted device in the back panel, it toasted itself!

What did we learn?

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Category: Software

Google Everything… Even Recipes

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:51:27 GMT

Now, if you go to google.com you can type in something you want to cook and use the recipes function. You can then specify how long you have to cook and how many calories it can contain. et voila.

Now if it could wash up that would be even better!

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Video

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:45:01 GMT

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Grey Floor

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:28:25 GMT

Grey Floor and glass table. And a laptop and stuff.

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Wood Laminate flooring

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:15:43 GMT

Here is an example of the wood laminate. I think it looks too shiny, perhaps the real thing won’t be that shiny, I have tried to match the colour.

Also, I don’t like the table, I am going to change it for a glass one.

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Kitchen #2

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:12:56 GMT

Wood laminate and stuff, lovin it! Well there is bugger all on the telly might as well be creative…

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Virtual Kitchen

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:43:43 GMT

Ok, so I painted the wall brown, put in a wood table, put in a wooden floor from floorstogo that you like, put in the spot lights and the fridge. Do you like it? PS- even in the virtual world some bugger hasn’t washed up!

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Forget 3D TV, 3D homes

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:46:35 GMT

Lovely way to test out interior design! You can use it online and check the results with your partner. no need to be in the same place Sweet I love it.

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Website testing (or lack of)

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:59:00 GMT

So I want to book a van, I noted that the calendar date could be set backwards (don’t ask me how I found this). This resulted in a negative result. It then multiplies the value and gets the result. Simple! Except they have cocked it up. So I found the maximum dates that it will let you set and lo and behold, they now owe me £656,634.00

It gets worse – this is an automated website, so if you then proceed with the booking, it may well credit your account!

Stoopid idiots – but I guess that's what you get for putting your website design to tender and going with the cheapest bidder.

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Category: Stoopid