Computer frooze today.

You were quiet for a while. Did you spend some time in a freezer?

--
groeten, pleerol (pleelol, in het Chinees) :-) 
Iedereen heeft gelijk, want niet iedereen IS gelijk. 
Meer spreuken: http://members.home.nl/pleerol

Must have been one of those 'Cold days in Hell' we hear about.

Yeah, he was in lock up.. His term must be completed! Too bad! :)

Jamie

Goblins. All Hallows' Eve (Hallowe'en to kids) is approaching.

Ever consider calculating the soft error rate of your RAM? Without ECC (error correction), a typical computah is going to about 1 bit error, per hour, per gigabyte or more, depending mostly on exposure to various types of radiation. Most of the time, the affected bit is in an area of memory that you're not using. Therefore, there's no effect until perhaps days later, when the operating system stumbles over the flipped bit, and hangs. Power line glitches can also cause such problems. This is why servers use ECC RAM.

If your NightmarePC 2006 computer supports ECC RAM, you may wish to replace ALL your RAM with ECC RAM. However, that does nothing for the various peripherals, video RAM, hard disk controller, and peripherals, none of which offer ECC, and any of which can be affected by radiation.

Your best bet is to expand the size of your tin foil hat. While you can't do anything for internally generated nuclear particles, you can reduce the effects from those arriving from outer space. Covering the computah with pure lead sheet: might help. Putting as much dirt as possible between your computer and the sky will also help. Therefore, I suggest you move to a cave or an abandoned lead mine for maximum protection.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

But, But, there's that lead poisoning problem!

Jamie

That was part of the plan. What lead poisoning does is irreversible brain damage. Since his brain is already damaged beyond repair, I don't see how any additional damage could hurt.

Only slightly more seriously, one of my Mac customers called with a problem. Their MacBook Pro was partly hung. For fun, I sent them to the shell prompt [Alt][F2] and had them run uptime. 58 days and something. I had to explain to them how to reboot the computer, as they had never done it intentionally before.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

En el artículo , Jeff Liebermann escribió:

preferably without power or internet.

--
 (\_/) 
(='.'=) 
(")_(")

En el artículo , Jeff Liebermann escribió:

this is a server I rebooted last year ;)

--
 (\_/) 
(='.'=) 
(")_(")

The new one? Is it any good?

If your PSU is about to die, then yes.

Consider getting some new capacitors(of right values/sizes/Impedance etc.) for your mainboard + PSU. They do not seem to live any longer than

6 years nowadays... and while you're at it buy some fitting MOV's for PSU's netfilter, too. A new PSU may be cheaper...

Google for Skybuck's review of x-com 2012 ;) :)

Bye, Skybuck :)

Apperently the boot freezing remains, so it probably has to do with something else, maybe file disk mounting...

Hmmm...

Bye, Skybuck.

So very maybe it was a freeze like the boot freeze hmmm... could be a vhd driver issue.

Bye, Skybuck.

[snip]

My son's PC had the same problem. While it was restarting after I checked the RAM's there was (according to my son, I didn't see it) a ball of light inside the PC case, and sparks close to the RAM's. And a few seconds later a terrible smell: the mobo burned out. Later I realized the problem probably was the mobo's battery. Maybe that's your PC's problem as well?

--
Jan Pieter. Zijn favoriete PC was verdwenen. Er lag een 
afscheidsbriefje met de woorden: 'niemand begrijpt mij'. 
Gelukkig heeft JP zijn hond nog: http://jp.dhs.org/

I don't think that little battery would ever cause sparks anywhere under any circumstances.

The ATX supply can provide enough power for a "ball of light".

The CPU regulator (VCore) is probably also capable of making a light show if shorted out. While it has overcurrent protection, it also has a relatively high power rating. I've seen a picture of one motherboard, where an area a couple inches all around the processor socket was charred, from a plane-to-plane short circuit. The sheet copper got so hot, it burned up the FR4 PCB material.

I was working in our lab at work one evening, with someone working about ten feet from me. His head was inside a large computer case (9u VME, maybe

20 slots or so). He was using a scope probe, and managed to short out the 5V supply, through a pin on a DIP IC. There was a burst of pure, white light, which cast a shadow of his head and body, onto the lab ceiling. After about two seconds, the leg on the IC completely burned off and the light level in the lab returned to normal. Naturally, this scared the crap out of the poor guy. It turns out the power supply was rated for 5V @ 100A (we hadn't really thought about the rating, before working on the project), so the supply could burn through just about any kind of fault in the computer. Impressive.

The tiny CR2032 could not do that. It couldn't deliver 100A. The battery may be sufficient to run small hobby motors, but I wouldn't expect more than that from it. A datasheet I have here, suggests around 0.16A on a short. In the motherboard circuit itself, a series 1K ohm resistor prevents more than

3mA from flowing in any case. To draw more current, you have to touch the shiny top of the cell, to an adjacent ground. The circuit itself is current limited to no more than 3mA. The in-circuit load is 10 micro amps, so the 1K resistor isn't hurting anything in terms of circuit performance. The voltage drop is hardly noticeable (10 microamps * 1000 = 0.01V drop).

Paul

Ah yes, the scope probe disaster scenario. A good chip usually has some current limiting scheme to protect from the dude with the scope probe. Often the short circuit protection isn't even stated in the datasheet since it doesn't have a strict limit. [You design the current limiter so it would never be hit under normal operation over all temps and process corners.]

Even though the current limit circuit would probably never be tested in operation, you need to get past the design-in phase. If the customer blows up a part and is to blame for it, you still might not get the design win if the competitor's product didn't blow up during the same fiddling phase of design.

[snip]

" My son's PC had the same problem. While it was restarting after I checked the RAM's there was (according to my son, I didn't see it) a ball of light inside the PC case, and sparks close to the RAM's. And a few seconds later a terrible smell: the mobo burned out. Later I realized the problem probably was the mobo's battery. Maybe that's your PC's problem as well?

-- Jan Pieter. Zijn favoriete PC was verdwenen. Er lag een afscheidsbriefje met de woorden: 'niemand begrijpt mij'. Gelukkig heeft JP zijn hond nog:

"

Hello thank you for writing to me, though this is a somewhat old thread :)

Most of my computer problems have been solved, except boot times take 10 minutes but I solve that by sleeping the PC.

Only issue remaining nowadays which is a new phenomenon is the break out box for X-Fi Elite Pro seems to hang/freeze up.

So volume control for surround sound system doesn't work anymore.

And red lights blinking on it which I wrote before about... it's quite odd/weird.

As a matter a fact it didn't do that before... so that's really weird. Maybe frequency/sound of fans changed.

I tried to place it at a bigger distance from PC case it helps a little bit... but its's still picking up signals.

So maybe it's not coming from the PC.

New theory/hypothesis: Maybe the PC's CASE is reflecting signals into the breakout base.

Maybe the PC's case is working a little bit like a big antenna.

Anyway...

Now back to your problem and son's observed spark... never before have I seen a light bulb inside the PC or anything like that.

The only time I saw a flash... was probably when some old chinese power supply blew !

I am not sure what caused it... either too much wattage was being drawn from wall socket.

Or my best guess: the power supply buckled because of gravity... and the clearing was not enough anymore and it short circuited !

Which is very dangerous I think ! the electricty went off and I was in the midst of darknes... later that night I had a nightmare... about the lights going out... me moving to the window and seeing aliens outside...

Quite scary... if I remember correctly it was when I turned on the light... but maybe my mind is playing tricks on me... it probably wasn't like that... maybe the light sparkled a bit.

Anyway... there was a blow out from the back of the PC and a little flash.

Anyway... main reason I write is that if it's the power supply sparking your son might be in danger...

I don't think it's that's the case... but one can't be carefull enough.

Try to inspect the power supply for any black markings... especially on the inside...

If it has any of those it's dangerous.

Anyway... also check if it's chinese... and from alluminium/flimsy... these are not to be trusted.

Nowadays... I have strong power supplies... more properly build... still some glue here and there in it... which is less ideal but ok.

That's at least my practical experience.

Maybe it will help you or maybe not.

Take care, see ya later.

(Fair has started again by the way...)

Bye, Skybuck.

" The ATX supply can provide enough power for a "ball of light". "

I agree with that. He/she should definetly check the power supply... it could cause a short circuit or maybe even death.

This incident is not to be taking lightly.

Bye, Skybuck.