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Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2000 Posts: 388 Location: USA

It always snows in Colorado before Halloween. Usually on Halloween. This year was no exception. The weather was beautiful all day, and not bad for the trick-o-treaters. But then, around 8pm, the wind started gusting. I had been downstairs, and when I came up to go to bed at midnight, I looked outside and said "Is that snow???!!" Yep, in the space of two hours, it had changed from being nice, to having 3 inches of snow on the ground. That's what I love about Colorado.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, after it snowed and during the night, our power went out a total of 12 times! We had brown-out conditions all night. Each time the power failed, my UPS alarm would wake us up. It was a bad night, and continued until about 11am Monday morning when it finally seemed to get better.

And ever since then, even though I use a UPS and had shutdown the computers in the house, my computer hasn't been the same. It no longer hot-syncs to my PDA...I get a error 8006 "Failed to start tasks" error in the log. Seems to have something to do with the USB. Some posters mention something called "spontaneous USB failure" where static electricity or power fluctuations can fry a USB port, either on the computer or the PDA. I'll have to install the Palm software on my laptop and see if it works from there.

But Internet Explorer has also been flaky, crashing at random times. Once when I was hot-synching, I got a blue-screen-of-death in WinXP, and that isn't supposed to happen anymore.

I scanned for Spyware using the Spybot Search and Destroy software and didn't find anything. My FSecure virus checker is up to date and doesn't complain about anything.

OK, I guess it's finally time then...time to bite the bullet and install SP2. I installed this on Chiara's computer a few weeks ago as a test and it seems to be fine, except for the fact that it doesn't seem to recognize FSecure as valid anti-virus software and keeps popping up annoyances about securing the computer.

So I run Windows Updater. Of course, Windows Updater itself needs to be updated. Reboot #1. Run Updater again. Oh, there is another IE patch that I have to install first before SP2. Reboot #2. Run Updater again. Finally I get the SP2 selection. Click, run...wait...wait...wait...Preparing to download...wait...wait for 15 minutes...still Preparing to download...what it taking so long? what could it possibly be doing?...wait...ahh, finally the download has started...hmm, 70MB?...good thing I have broadband...download finally finishes...verifying download...wait...wait...it prompts me to start the install...wait...wait...wait a *long* time...man, I don't remember it taking this long on Chiara's computer.

As I'm waiting, I come over to Chiara's computer to write some more zApp articles in the documentation library. I glance over after 30 minutes and it's only 10% done. Geez. I write some more articles, then come over and write this Blog entry.

It's now been over an hour and it's only 40% done. I *really* hope that I don't regret this.

But I have some predictions for when the update is done:

My Hotsync still won't work
My IE crashes will still occur, but at new and different random times
I'll start getting annoying popups asking me to secure my computer
Something that used to work will no longer work
I'll come post a comment to this blog complaining more about Microsoft Windows

Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky at it will all go smoothly? After all, Miracles *can* happen. The Red Sox won after all.
(Unless they used up all of the luck for the year and didn't leave any for the rest of us)

Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 10:22 pm

Nope, Hotsync still doesn't work. I removed the driver for the Sony Handheld USB device. When I plugged it back in, Windows detected it and reinstalled the Sony Handheld device. So, that seems to indicate that the USB port is working at some level. But it still won't transfer any data.

Blah, I hate computers.

Oh, at least I found out how to turn off the warnings in SP2 about not having virus protection.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Nod I was going to say heres how to turn off the warnings, but seems you figured it out :)

Just SP2'd mah bosses laptop, still don't dare install it on my PC ;)

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:00 am

SP2 seems to be fine still. That's a miracle.

The PDA Hotsync still isn't working. I installed the Sony software on my laptop and it works fine there, so at least that means it's not the PDA USB interface.

This main computer has one of those VIA motherboards since it's an Athlon system. I've read about problems with this and have discovered that you can't even download USB 2.0 drivers for VIA motherboards from the net due to some sort of licensing issues.

Looks like I'll be stopping at the local computer store tonight to pick up a cheap PCI USB board and just forget about using these motherboard ports. My guess is that the motherboard ports got fried by the power outage somehow. It seems like it can transfer some data, but just not a lot at full speed since it crashes during the hotsync at different spots each time (although very early and before it actually gets to any real data). Sometimes it verifies the username, sometimes it doesn't get that far.

What a waste of another whole day.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Nah, you have to have SP1 or SP2 to get the VIA USB 2.0 drivers ... I used to have VIA-based (well I still do in my old PC) motherboards and hate them, so many hardware issues. Nevermore will I touch via, for AMD-based system it's n-force, otherwise an intel chipset.

You should be able to get the USB 2.0 drivers off windows update, or failing that off your motherboard manufacturer. I would blame hotsync myself, I hate palm based devices, activesync and pocketpc all the way baybeee! :P

(then again I have to program these devices for work, so my personal view on them might be a bit biased)

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:12 am

Well, I got a PCI USB 2.0 card for $30, so that was probably the cheapest thing left to try. It's not Hotsync itself, because a) it works fine on the laptop, and b) I removed everything and reinstalled on the main system and it still didn't help. This computer is about 5 years old, so I doubt I'd get any support for the motherboard if I even knew what it is. Besides, I'm guessing it's a hardware problem caused by the power issues rather than a software problem...too much of a coincidence that it just suddenly stopped working that same day.

But I agree with you on the palm issue. But I can't afford a pocketpc right now. But when this PDA become obsolete, it's goodbye to Palm and hello to PocketPC. As much as I hate using more Microsoft stuff.

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:39 am

Geez, I haven't installed the new USB card yet, but I was just browsing a web site about CSS and my computer just suddenly reset itself. I heard a click and it just instantly reset, as if the reset button had been pressed. It couldn't have been pressed, since it's behind a cabinet door to protect it from the cats and stray fingers. And I can't imagine any way to do something as instantaneous as this was via software. Even driver errors usually at least give a blue-screen.

Hmm, maybe I need to check my Error reporting and Shutdown settings to see if SP2 changed them to that annoying reboot mode.

This obviously isn't my day for computers.

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:41 am

Hmm, nope, the startup and recovery settings are fine. It is even set to put stuff in the Event log, but nothing got entered. Maybe a powerful cosmic ray hit the CPU or something. Who knows. But I think it's time to stop using this computer for tonight.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Your power supply may have been damaged by the brownouts, system instability happens if you don't get enough juice to the computer... but who knows eh, that's just another thing to pay lots of money for in a guessing game of hardware. Most ppl say you get what you pay for in power supplies and should spend a minimum of US$60 to get a reasonable one if it does come down to trying that.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 4:02 pm

What sort of guarantee does the UPS manufacturer offer? Obviously your system sustained some sort of damage to the power supply or mother board from the power fluctuations. With any luck, they might pay for a couple of things.

Nezic

Also, it might be prudent to run some sort of memory checker to make sure your ram didn't get damaged either.

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 5:54 pm

Yeah, this is getting wierd. This morning I came in to find the computer powered off. I left it on last night as I always do. It's possible it's the power supply. But during the brown-out and power outages, I had shut the computer down, and it is protected by a UPS. But since the computer was still plugged into the UPS, I suppose it's possible that something got through the UPS and into the computer power supply. But none of the other computers in the house, including a couple that are not even on a UPS were effected.

If this continues, I will probably look into the power supply within the computer itself, since I don't see how a UPS failure can cause the computer to turn itself off or reset itself (they are not connected in any sort of interrupt fashion or anything).

The UPS is about 5 years old and I have no idea if it has any warranty or how that works. I certainly don't have the receipt for it after this amount of time (since I have moved from New Mexico to Colorado since I bought it).

Also, when I open the computer to install the USB card I'll check to make sure all of the power cables are properly tied up and not touching something they shouldn't.

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 7:27 pm

I just remembered an interesting article about power conditioning and found it after searching my bookmarks at: http://www.dansdata.com/sbs9.htm

I'm not entirely sure how relevant it is to your situation since your computer wasn't running at the time, but it's a good read. It talks a bit about computer power supplies near the beginning of the article, then talks about surge protectors(and how they're not good), standby power supplies(SPS), and UPS's.

(I hate to give you another distraction, since I'm sure it's frustrating enough with everything currently on your plate.)

Nezic

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:12 pm

OK, this is just wierd. I haven't replaced my UPS yet. I haven't even installed my new USB card yet. I haven't had any resets or wierd power problems for the last couple of days. So this morning I tried synching my PDA. It actually worked!!

I haven't done anything since the last time it didn't work. I don't even think I've rebooted since then. But something that was being very stubborn and not working a couple of days ago is now suddenly working.

Computers are very wierd and mysterious!

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:35 pm

Sigh...nevermind, it was just trying to mess with me. Halfway through the synch it hung, and now it doesn't work again. So it's still got to be the USB ports. I'll just have to find the time and energy to open up the computer to install this new USB card. But not today...I need to get something productive done and messing with computer hardward is too frustrating most of the time.