Hi guys, boy, am I glad to be back online!!!

Had a long day & night yesterday, upgrading/repairing & running off sp3 disks for the customers with service contracts. Managed to get to bed around 7/8am this morning.

Unfortunately, I was woken up by a loud bang around 10:30. Andrea had tripped over something & a large mug of tea went everywhere

All over 3 rigs (Server, Workstation & Desktop), all my tech books, printer, everything
I admit it, it was my fault. I've gotten lax over the past several weeks & everything was scattered all over.

Spent the next 5 hours clearing up, cleaning rigs etc. Oh well, it needed a spring clean anyway. The worst thing was that after getting everything up & running, I could not get an internet conection on the quad. Racked my brains for over 30 minutes & still couldn't find out why!

Andrea, bless her, even though she is not techically minded suggested I check all plugs. Wasn't too happy at that interruption, but you know what? She was right. The quad mobo has 2 ethernet connections & I had reconnected in the wrong socket

So for all those avid crunchers, the moral of the story is: -

1: Don't miff off the wife

2: Tidy up those blinking cables!

I've spent more time today with cables than I've actually spent on the rigs!

HEY SIRIUS B
GLAD TO HEAR YOU GOT ALL THE BOXES BACK RUNNING AGAIN. IT SOUNDS LIKE A BIT OF A NIGHTMARE.
SP3 IS A NIGHTMARE ALL BY ITSELF. ON THE BOXES I HAVE XP INSTALLED, NONE HAVE SP1 SP2 OR SP3. I LIKE THE WAY XP CORP WORKS WITHOUT ANY SP2 OR 3. IF I INSTALL AN SP2 OR 3, THEN I START HAVING PROBLEMS.

1: Don't miff off the wife . WELL YOU'RE VERY RIGHT THERE. IT NEVER HURTS TO LISTEN TO A SUGGESTION. BESIDES, YOU HAVE TO LIVE WITH HER AFTERWARDS. LOL.
MY FIRST WIFE REBUILT THE VALVE TRAIN IN MY FIRST CAR (67 IMPALA 283). SHE TOLD ME IT WAS GETTING BAD AND I DIDN'T AGREE. WELL IT BROKE ON HER WHILE I WAS AT WORK. SHE PICKED ME UP FROM WORK THAT DAY AND IT WAS RUNNING GREAT. SHE HAD LAPPED THE VALVES, NEW VALVE SPRINGS, AND NEW PUSH RODS. I HAD NO IDEA THAT SHE KNEW HOW TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT. I DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION CAUSE I DIDN'T THINK SHE KNEW WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT.
A BIG CROW PIE FOR DINNER THAT NIGHT. OH YA, SHE WAS 7 OR 8 MONTHS PREGNANT.
YOU JUST NEVER KNOW.

DR.Z

Hi Zappdog. you're spot on there. Every time we men think that we got to know our women, they throw us a curve.

After all that, I have got a problem that I am trying to resolve. both the server & the quad are running @ 57c with boinc running full steam ahead. However, the destop, an X2 3800 is clocking up 81c. Have cleaned fans/heatsink but it's still showing 81c.

Opened up the case & all fans running so can't understand why. I'm hoping it's not the cpu as it's been running 24/7 since last June with only a few days off for cleaning/upgrading.

RAC about to take a nosedive It looks like the cooler is dying, so will shut it down overnight until I replace it. Can't complain though, it has been running 24/7 for close to a year.

Found 2 reasons why rigs were running hot. 1st, the weekend was a hot & muggy one, so the room temp may have had something to do with it.
2nd, on stripping the desktop, found sticky tea on fans, HD's. Took them out & cleaned them thoroughly & temp now down to 67c under load. It's due a thorough service this weekend, so will completely strip down, clean & rebuild.

I knew I should have transferred all programs/files etc to quad workstation when it was completed, but I thought I'd leave it for the time being.

Another lesson learnt - Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today.

Hi Guys, need help.

Desktop temps were bugging me, so stripped it down, thoroughly cleaned & reassembled. While typing this, am looking at the rig, everything running normal.

Problem is this, on booting up, bios is okay & can see all bios pages no problem (screen quite clear). On getting to windows, it just shows windows logo (as it loads up before getting to the logon). Screen dark & you can barely see the word, windows.

Thought it might be the gpu so changed it over to another, same problem. Anyone else come across this? Any suggestions?

Board is full atx, no integrated graphics - it's an ECS KN1 SLI.

HEY SIRIUS B
NOT REALLY SURE THERE, I HAVE HAD SOMETHING LIKE THAT BUT NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS. CORRUPTED DISPLAY SETTING FILE MAYBE ?
SO (HERE I GO AGAIN) TRY THE PUPPY LIVE CD.
THAT WILL TELL YOU IF ITS WIN OR HARDWARE.
JUST A THOUGHT.
DR.Z

Thanks Zappdog. It's been a long night. Just finished servicing 11 rigs with another 6 coming later today & a further 17 before the weekend. My brains were a bit addled.

The simple solution was right in front of me all the time. I just took the HD out & popped into the backplane on the workstation. Ran scandisk then popped it back into the desktop. All ok, & typing this on the desktop.

You are probably correct, it must have been a corrupted file. 1st time I've seen that problem. Another one for my notebook.

Also, just finished looking in the Solar System issues. I think I've found the page that will help you so will scan it in after I've had some rest.

Regards

PJ

I had a problem like that with windows stuck on load up, in the end I had to reload the operating system

Hi Timmy. I've found that by using a HD Enclosure & attaching it to another rig, by running scandisk, 9/10, it clears the problem & saves having to reload the o/s.

With the newer systems built for customers having sata drives, I just use the backplane on workstation. I still use the enclosure for ide drives.

I must remember that one, I have a few HD enclosures kicking around the place here, including one that does sata and ide

Update..........

After that little mishap last month, I've still been worried about the temps on desktop. For the past few days, as the weather was warming up, temp rose to 81c. It really bugged me, so stripped HSF down & applied Artic Silver. That reduced temp to 77c, but felt it was still too high.

Said to hell with it & bought another Akasa EvoBlue cooler which I have running in the quad & server.

Bingo, temp 55c under load. that'll teach me - never put faith in stock coolers. Mind you, I can't complain as it ran for 19 months 24/7. What I can't understand is that it is not hotter than last summer (yet) & had no problems with temps back then.

Lesson no 2..............If you beta test - KEEP on top of it!



On getting back from London last weekend, I could not wait to get the coolermaster built. Throughout the weekend, worked on upgrading Andrea's rig & rebuilding workstation. Great fun with hardly any problems. Until Monday that is! Several external rigs on farm had gone down & within several hours of noticing it, the phone rang, & sure enough, it was the owners & could I repair their systems. 1 had corrupted files, so it would be just a matter of backing up from server. The 2nd, they had somehow fried the bios, gpu, hd 2 sticks (out of 4) ram.

Thought I'd deal with the 1st one 1st. Attached to server & tried to access it - no joy. Nothing but backup errors & file conflicts. Took ages to track it down. Problem was I was beta testing powerpack 1 for WHS & did not keep on top of it. As you can see from the above photo, before the RTM version could be installed, the beta had to be uninstalled & the only way was a server reinstallation. 29 hrs later, she's back online & very fortunately for me, the backups were safe. An hour later, customer 1 is up & running.

As for customer 2, what a nightmare. Purchased a new mobo yesterday, reinstalled everything - installed o/s & on rebooting get the following: - Error - Missing operating system! spent most of the day trying to fathom this one out. Returned to an old solution. Used win98 bootup disk, deleted non dos partition, did not format & reinstalled o/s. NET-3 now back online - lovely stuff. Retuned it to customer this morning. On return Andrea's old rig had somehow locked up - weird. Rebooted & it's fine (so far).

What a week & the temps here don't help! They're saying it's going to hit the mid 80's over the weekend so will have to find those fans to help keep room cool - don't fancy dropping my rac just yet

Just remembered........... 1 problem with the 2nd rig was this.. After o/s installation & all drivers installed, it showed up as drive H. On going to disk Management to change it over to drive C: Was denied as it stated that you cannot change system drive letter. Any one have ideas as to why it installed as drive H?

It has only 1 DVD-Rom & the HD is a Western Digital 400gb Sata2.