Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 It can be a bummer being the "IT Guy" to friends (or family) sometimes. I mean, I don't like being responsible for other people and their things, but mostly I'm really frustrated when I can't solve a problem. It feels like I'm letting down someone close on top of the basic annoyance of failure. My friend's computer really has me stumped. She got components for Christmas and put them together, but nothing powered on. I looked at it without much luck. The motherboard has actually been replaced twice now and it still doesn't work, but I cannot fathom what the issue is. Normally, when a computer won't turn on, I first blame the PSU. That seems one of the more failure-prone components in a computer. What happens? When all connected and the PSU switch turned on, there's an RGB light on the motherboard that comes on, but that's it. The computer itself cannot be switched on with the power button, the diagnostic error lights on the motherboard do n...

So, two things of remark happened last night: One, I ordered a new desktop computer. It felt about time, and I'd been shopping around a bit. A little more pricy than ideal, but tolerable, and it may be a few weeks before delivery. Two, my current desktop overheated and shut down playing Guild Wars 2 again. It seems this is just intensive enough to do that. This time, though, when I restarted, I opened up the case and had a look. The power supply fan was not moving, and even after some tinkering to get it going, it doesn't seem up to proper speed. So there's the likely physical reason. Connection? Yeah, just a bit. So now I need to see if I can keep this one running cool enough to be stable while I wait for a replacement.

So, I've been pondering a new computer, and this has led me to think some about the old ones I've had over the years... My first... well, my first computer was a Commodore 64. Not much to say there, other than it was one of the best Christmas presents ever. Mostly, I used it for games, but still. Around the time I went off to college, I was given a laptop (Winbook, I think). It was pretty spiffy for its time, though the LCD screen was not color and showed heavy ghosting in games like Wing Commander Academy. It was good for MUCKing and typing as well. Then I picked up a Dell desktop. It worked fine, so far as I recall, for games and work. After that, I wanted a gaming computer. I heard lots of spiffy things about water cooling. So, I built one. This taught me a lot. Building a computer is an awesome experience, but not without its possible pitfalls. I reused a number of things out of the Dell. And one of the biggest lessons I took away from this: water cooling really is...

Well, Saturday was sort of a lackluster "raid night" in WoW . Some people not present, one person not healthy, and a roster that's usually tight. And with where I'm at personally, I wasn't particularly eager to push for VP-generating activities. We did group up and take down a quest boss for one person. That was nice because we could do it as a group of between 5 and 10 people, though one player had issues with no seeing the "stop yourself from bleeding to death" extra action button. The guild's still in an uncomfortable place. We've never quite hit our stride with raiding in MoP, as attrition has outpaced recruitment. Our guild leader stresses out about this entirely too much, in my opinion. While forward progress is great and all, those who are motivated can at least see the raid encounters via LFR these days and I think it's rare that people enjoy spending a night wiping on one or two bosses. As long as we've got a raid group of basi...

I've had occasional (and usually brief) cable internet outages every now and then for the last couple months at least. It's easy to brush off: "well, it's working now." And it's hard to troubleshoot when you replace a cable and it works... until it doesn't. But it seems to be growing more common. And after getting home last night and having this trouble impede my ability to both remote connect to work to resolve an issue and to log on to WoW and do some leveling, I had to admit it's past the point of my troubleshooting and hoping. Finally called in today and there should be a tech out tomorrow afternoon to check on things. The phone rep I talked to seemed to think the symptoms sounded like a signal issue, though I'm unclear on what they'll try in order to resolve that.

So let's see... My desktop seems to be down for the count. It consistently locks up now. I've determined it's not either of the RAM stick (though it could theoretically be both). I don't really have the spare parts to test the PSU, video card, or motherboard. There is one heat sink/fin array on the mobo that seems particularly hot when running, but I can't say for sure that isn't normal. Not good, all-in-all. So for now, I've got my laptop hooked up to everything - keyboard, mouse, monitor - and thusfar it seems able to handle it okay. I suppose when I get around to running randoms in WoW will be the main test before raiding tonight, to see if I need to turn down graphic settings to make things playable or anything. According to status updated, my new computer is done, shipped, and scheduled to arrive Tuesday. That's faster shipping than I would have expected, and the build time is within the advertised 5-10 business day range. I was worried it mig...

My desktop computer seems to be continuing its march toward official death. Hasn't wanted to stay on and stable since yesterday afternoon. I'm fairly sure it's not just the RAM at this point, but doing a little diagnosis while primarily using my laptop. The new computer I ordered was "assembled" and progressing into install/testing at last update. Even if it finished that today, though, shipping puts delivery probably a week or so out. Bleh.

So while I research new computer options and compare video cards and such, I had hoped a graphics driver update might miraculously fix my problems. I didn't expect it and it didn't work. Desktop locked up again shortly after startup when I got home. Looking more closely, though, I noticed the heat sinks on one of the RAM sticks were pulling off. That could be the problem. Running it with just the other (even 1 GB), WoW seems prone to stuttering, though. Hrm...

I replaced "my" laptop just... last month, I think it was? And then had one of my older hard drives fail in my desktop PC. Now the other old drive has been showing IO errors with some regularity. Thankfully the main system drive hasn't shown any problems. I think I've got everything backed up from the old one, so that's not a huge problem. It's also been locking up on occasion with a glitchy-looking on-screen pattern. That's not so good. I actually just swapped my keyboard and mouse over once last week to finish the WoW dungeons I was trying to do. My gut reaction was an overheating graphics card or somesuch, but this tends to happen shortly after the computer is turned on rather than after it's been running for a while. It's not happening all the time, but enough to be annoying and troubling. Video card? Maybe. RAM? Maybe. Motherboard? Well... maybe. It could be just about anything, but it's not consistent enough (and I don't have spare ...