Sometimes drives just go bad. Surprise. One recent fresh install of Windows XP had started having real stability problems. On running a chkdsk and looking at the event viewer, it was fairly clear that 16KB of bad sectors and the disk problems had likely been the problem (lots of disk and atapi errors in the system log. Mostly disk error during paging operation (swap filing)) So…. I looked at cloning the drive using dd_rescue. All went well and the new system booted up on the new identically sized drive. In fact EVERYTHING was fine except chkdsk still reported 16KB of bat sectors….
Category: Hardware
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Legal wi-fi jamming
I’ve heard rumors of how the 802.11 pre-n wireless networking hardware really KILLS nearby 802.11 wireless b/g networks. Today George Ou has some details. I really think this is a serious problem with the equipment coming out as it will force people to move to another wireless standard. (Somehow, this is all starting to make sense now – wait – maybe it ISN’T a problem “from a certain point of view”.) Anyway – it sounds like it’s really problematic to troubleshoot because it only kills the other networks when transmitting, so symptoms of the problem would be sporadic network drops. (Ouch wireless is going to be getting tricker ESPECIALLY in high density areas.)
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2,000 year old computer?
The Register had an interesting article on the analysis of what may get classified as the worlds oldest computer (2000 years old – Greek.) Apparently it’s been known for a while (discovered in an old shipwreck around 1900). It’s been called the “Antikythera Mechanism” and has more than 30 dials and wheels. Anyway, it’s currently been undergoing detailed imaging analysis which has uncovered some new clues which may reinforce a theory that it was designed to track/predict planetary locations (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known to the ancient Greeks.)
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Wiping data from hard drives
How often do I get to talk about this? Yahoo News has an article on a couple who, a year ago, took their PC to Best Buy to have the hard drive swapped. Best Buy assured them that the drive would be destroyed…. Recently they got a call from a guy in Chicago that had bought a hard drive at a flea market. It had their data on it and he wondered if they wanted it or if he should wipe the data. OK – there’s this really good utility Dariks Boot and Nuke (DBAN) that can thoroughly wipe a hard drive. I know the couple in this article had taken their drive to someone else, but….
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Epson Perfection 1650 scanner and Windows XP Limited User account
“We tried scanning and all that happened was the lamp moved back and forth…. Nothing else happened.” That was the description I had and the request to see why the scanner was broken. It hadn’t been long since the Epson scanner had been hooked up to a new XP Pro system. The machine sees quite a bit of public use so we had thought it would be best to divide accounts into Visitor which is an unpriviliged user and another account for the ability to work with software that was not as cooperative in an unpriviliged account.
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Internet based filesystem with no transfer fees
I thought this was a great idea…. rsync.net Okay for 2$ per GB of storage per month (or $24 per year for 1GB of storage) you can have your very own secure online storage drive. For you windows users think of a G: drive or a Z: drive that you could SECURELY connect to from a home machine and a work machine…. If you’re concerned about a catastrophic failure of one of their datacenters, then pay $3.50/GB/month for a more geographically dispersed plan (uses redundant data centers..) The best parts (I think) are this…. ssh encrypted connection to your drive and no transfer fees.
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Strange Desktop issue resolved….
Well, it’s annoying to me when my own computer has issues that I can’t seem to track down and off and on for the last year I’ve had annoying seemingly random shut downs (I mean it’s as if someone pulled the power plug). It was an AMD XP 1800 system. The first I noticed the problem, I was trying to transcode video. A few minutes into the process – bang power off and it would be followed by a painfull 30 seconds of the system trying to post, shutting down, restarting, off, start, off, start with the floppy drive getting a seek every second or two as it seemed to try to muster the power to boot. For this reason, my first suspect was the power supply, 4 drives, hefty processor, hefty video card, (sound card, network, tv card, etc.etc.etc) maybe my generic 300 watt wasn’t steady enough?
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Linksys BEFW11S4 ver. 4 wireless router locking up (default password and hard reset info too)
Not long ago a customer offered me a slightly used Linksys BEFW11S4 ver. 4 wireless router for free. He had replaced it with an 802.11g router (this is only a b) shortly after purchase and said if I knew anyone that wanted it I could have it. Well, it’s hard for me to let tech pass through my hands without taking a look at it and testing it a bit. So, one of the first things I did was test out how well the wireless signal was received from a basement. (Concrete block walls, dirt, etc. blocking..) I was surprised at how well the signal did through concrete, dirt and a couple hundred feet of air.
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Upgrade your mouse
This is going in the basics category. Quite often I visit a computer that has a mouse which is just a trial of patience to use. I mean, you have to pick it up and move it, shake it a bit, turn it over and clean out the lint from the “ball” area…. The good news is that mousing does NOT have to be like this. If your computer has a PS2 (small round plug) for your mouse, or a USB (small rectangular plug) for your mouse, it should be VERY easy to replace that old ball style mouse with an optical mouse.
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Tools of the trade – Compactflash card reader
I’ve probably mentioned before that I like the compactflash format for “digital media”. My camera uses Compactflash, so does the nexia audio player I use and the old used pda I’ve got, uses compactflash, so…. I have a variety of cards around, I’ve got an 8MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 512MB and 1024MB card around somewhere. With all those cards and just three devices…. well, when I started thinking “usb memory stick” to replace floppy discs to move files from one machine to another… I thought, why should I pay for something with the memory built in… so, I found something that did well….