Sunday (13 Mar) - Beware the Serial Computer Killer

Sunday (13 Mar) - Beware the Serial Computer Killer

This is a compilation of the computer problems that have been plaguing me for almost all of 2011 so far. It's a tale that were I not experiencing it I would not have believed. I pulled all of the old posts referring to those problems and repeated them here in order to have a complete chronology of events. The repeated posts are labeled as such and you can skip down to "The NEW Stuff!" below if all you want is the latest entry.

(repeat) Weekend (31 Jan) - Got The Blues

My aging Linksys cable modem was starting to have drop out issues. They were rare (a couple of times a day) and short (just a few seconds) but it was enough to DC me in WoW when it happened. The Mrs noticed the drop outs as well. We also have a shared drive where we keep things like our image folders and backups. That drive went belly up recently and I needed to get that back into working order as well. Third, we upgraded our cable TV system this past week so that the Mrs can watch her DVRed shows in any of the three rooms where we have a TV. It also coincidentally upgraded us to full HDTV, even though only one of our TVs is Hi-Def (the one in my office). Does this sound familiar to anyone? I'm thinking I already mentioned this but I don't see it in the blog. Oh well.

So, all of that took time. The Linksys modem is now gone, replaced by a wired/wireless combo cable modem from Motorola. I was also able to get rid of the separate wireless router I was using, as well as eliminate a router extender that was also hooked in. Not bad, replacing three boxes with one. And the signal has been clean and steady.

Then I tackled getting a new external hard drive connected into the network for our shared drive, and the time it took to reload all the stuff we'd had on the old defunct drive.

(end 31 Jan repeat)

(repeat) Weekend (6 Feb) - Chaitee Destroyed My Computer

Weekend (6 Feb) - Chaitee Destroyed My Computer

[Note - Between the last entry above and the one below my main computer blew a power supply which also took out the CPU fan. I had the repair shop confirm the damage and check to the rest of the hardware, which came back as fine. I replaced the power supply and CPU fan and went back to using the computer, but continued to have intermittent problems. Concerned that the hard drive could be failing, I started a chkdsk program to see if the hard drive was ok.]

It's Saturday afternoon and I am doing a check of my hard drive. That check has been in progress for most of four hours now - it's 52% complete. I'm writing this on my "old and slow" computer.

On saturday morning Chaitee was in Darkshore. When I logged on, having Chaitee in game and in Darkshore was the farthest thing from my mind. Daethbot logged in a little later and said Hi and asked how things were going.

Well, I wasn't sure, since what I thought I was doing this morning was cleaning out and organizing the horde side bank. How that task wound up with Alliance toon Chaitee in Darkshore is a long story. So of course you know I'm going to tell it.

But first, excuse me while I go off to do a honeydo. I may not have a weekday 9-5 job, but that doesn't exempt yours truly from Saturday chores.

When I came back to the computer the disk check was at 54%. Definitely taking it's time.

Before we get to Chaitee, it was JB who was the first in game on Saturday morning (after Happy and Lost did their AH business, of course; oh, and after Melasahnd and Rakta did some neutral AH work). Ok, so JB was the fifth in game on Saturday morning.

The day before, JB, Philly, Sis, and Lao all collaborated on a project that ended with most of the pre-cata jewelcrafting mats being used to make the pre-cata purple gems. With a bunch of those gems crafted, a large chunk of old, lesser gems could be vendored off to make room for the better ones. If you've already forgotten, the plan was to clean up and organize the horde side bank. All well and good.

The disk check was up to 60%.

JB decided to take the bit of bank cleaning a little further. A rather significant number of bank slots across all four tabs were mats for the cooking profession. Just about everything imaginable, from eggs and wings to meat from just about every animal that walked on Azeroth. And the fish! Gah!

Well, it was stinking up the place and something had to be done. Of course, that stuff would not be vendored. No! This was stuff that could be used. Nobody was using it, which was why it was still sitting in the bank - but that was a mere detail. It would not affect JB's plans.

JB set out to count, categorize and assign action on every piece of rotting flesh and hacked up body part. She checked the cooking abilities of every member of the Wild Clan, both Horde and Alliance. Someone had to need this stuff, and JB was determined to find out who was going to be the recipient of all this dripping largesse.

Well, all politics and behind the scene deals aside, the "winner" of JB's food bank was Sista. Sista didn't know that she was the chosen one, but again - small detail.

It was time for action. JB still had one detail to attend to, however. Nearly all of the cooking materials on hand were for recipes beginning around the 175 skill level. That was a bit of an inconvenience, since Sista was at only skill 61 in cooking. What to do, what to do?

Well, there were these crabs. They roamed all over the shores of Darkshore, and the crab meat and crab claws just happened to make pretty good cooking at the level Sista would need. Someone had to go out and kill those crabs. Sista could do it, but she was already a lofty level 35 and killing those Darkshore crabs wouldn't get her a single experience point. JB needed a better volunteer, one who could benefit from all that crab killin'.

Enter Chaitee. Level 20 Chaitee was at just the right level - high enough to make the killing fast, low enough to get some nice xp from the effort. When informed of JB's plans, Chaitee eagerly accepted. She was monumentally bored just sitting in Stormwind. Chaitee wanted to be fully equipped for the journey, so Rakta had to give up her heirloom bow, and Mery sent over her chest, shoulder, and trinket heirlooms.

The disk check was up to 65% now. Still slow, but still chugging along.

Chaitee was ready to go. Almost. See, Chaitee had not done any cooking at all. Couldn't she take just a little time to get the basics done? Without waiting for an answer, Chaitee headed for the tavern where the cooking trainer hung out. Well, to be perfectly accurate, she had to ask at least three guards how to find the place. But she did, and made flour and spice bread to get to 40 skill in cooking. Chaitee thought that was great fun. She loaded up on more recipes and then raided the guild bank - the Alliance guild bank - of whatever cooking mats it held. Coupled with some mats left over from her leveling days with Java, Chaitee got up to 60 skill, right up there with Sista.

Chaitee was in Stormwind City, by the way. So she had to take the ship in Stormwind harbor over to whatever that lonely coastal town is called on Teldrassil, and then talked a flight master into carting her to Darkshore. Chaitee and her combat pet Tazzy then walked the length and breadth of Darkshore, killing those crabs, and anything else that caught their attention. Chaitee DINGED! to level 21 and collected enough mats for her and Sista both to keep leveling their cooking.

Chaitee wanted to head back to Stormwind, meet up with Sista, and share the spoils. She splashed her way to the boardwalk in the little Darkshore town of Lor'Danel and asked the flight master to take her home - and that was when the computer froze, and the mouse, and the keyboard, and Windows refused to reboot or reload, and that's why I'm writing this on my old backup computer and watching chkdsk tic off the percentage completed on the likely mortally wounded hard drive.

The disk check was at 65% when I was called to dinner.

After dinner Chaitee gave the "old and slow" computer a chance to continue the project. She returned to Stormwind and Sista joined her shortly thereafter. Chaitee's excellent work provided the means for Sista to reach skill 181 in cooking. Sista quickly got into the spirit and decided to take on the next leg of the project. Even as Melasahnd and Rakta were preparing to start transferring mats such as Red Wolf Meat, Tender Wolf Meat, Bear Flanks, Small Flame Sacs, and Mystery Meat, Sista was making her way to the other continent.

After a bit more than six hours run time, chkdsk reported that everything was fine now. I was dubious that "fine" captured the state of that hard drive.

The chkdsk had been executed by using the Windows boot disk using the command line only. About all I could say about that was the core memory seemed ok. There was only one way to find out if the hard drive really was operational and sane. I rebooted the computer from the hard drive (instead of the boot disk) and asked Windows to go into Safe Mode. I was pretty shocked when the computer did boot properly into safe mode. This was too good to be true, but I wasn't wasting the good fortune. Not sure how long it would last, I started backing up files onto another drive. Once all the really important stuff was taken care of, I decided to do a full boot. And it worked. The hard drive is operational again. I don't trust it, though, and I haven't attempted to run WoW on it. Just running normal programs causes strange sounds to emanate from the computer. It's either the hard drive itself, or it could be the power supply. I'm hoping it's the power supply. I just had that replaced recently and it was still under warranty.

Since it looked like I was not going to be using my main computer for awhile, I mirrored my main computer WoW configuration on my backup computer. WoW runs slower and is prone to lag, but should be workable. Except for dungeons and raiding. Which puts Wild's Wed/Thurs raid plans in jeopardy.

I'm not complaining, though. A lot of work is still ahead. But it could have been oh so much worse.

(end 6 Feb repeat)

(repeat) Tuesday Night (8 Feb) - Hitting The Dungeons

My main computer is still at the shop. I'm hoping to hear back from them today, at least to find out what they think is wrong.

(end 8 Feb repeat)

(repeat) Saturday (12 Feb) - Computer Woes

[Note - Despite the thumbs up from the chkdsk I wound up taking it back to the shop for further diagnostics. Something was still wrong. ]

On the computer front things were not as far along as Wild's gear improvements. The repair shop concluded that hardware was not the problem. Everything checked out. The problem was a corrupted Windows operating system (O/S). Since the shop wanted a fortune to fix that, and even with that would leave me having to reinstall all of the drivers and programs I needed, I opted to take my baby home and nurse it back to health myself.

I had three choices: (1) I could attempt a repair of the O/S. That was the simplest method, and sometimes it even worked. The benefit is that all of my drivers and programs would still be there. More often, though, it only partially works, leaving problems that don't crop up until later. (2) Do a fresh install of the O/S. This would wipe the drive, so I would have to be VERY, VERY sure I backed up everything important. A fresh install would clean out two years worth of accumulation of small problems as well as likely improving performance. Of course, I'd still have to re-install everything. (3) Buy a new hard drive and install the O/S on that drive. The only difference between this and (2) is that I would still have the old drive available in case my backup missed something important. One downside is that my computer already has three hard drives in it and things are a bit crowded in there. Installing a new drive is also an extra step and would take longer.

One other option is to buy a new computer. However, the current computer, although two years old, still has a lot of life in it. It would benefit from a more current video card and 6GB of RAM instead of it's current 4GB, but other than that it's as good as any mid-level computer I could buy today.

I don't feel like adding yet another hard drive to the computer as I already have three terabytes worth of space to work with. And I don't think a repair will fix a corrupted O/S that's probably been suspect since that first power spike took out my power supply. So, I'm going to make doubly sure I have everything backed up, and go with option (2). Pray for me.

(end 12 Feb repeat)

(repeat) Monday (14 Feb)- Hearnoevils and the Rest of the Hunter Fortress

The big news over the weekend was getting my computer put back together and operating semi-normally.

(end 14 Feb repeat)

(repeat) Sunday (20 Feb) - Shevils Gets a Job with Naithipe's Help

[Another computer failure has caused delays in posting - this should have been posted several days ago. Additional posts will follow to get caught up. The computer has got to go.]

(end 20 Feb repeat)

(repeat) Monday (21 Feb) - Computer Tales of Woe

Over the weekend my main computer, having been renewed with a complete hard drive wipe and a fresh, pristine install of Windows XP, crashed three times. It crashed twice while in Warcraft, and a third time while doing nothing but copying files. Each time it took several tries to get the computer running again. I'd had enough.

This being President's Day weekend, I figured this was a good time to find a good buy on a computer. I would have thought that any good mid-range computer would be an upgrade to my current computer, which I bought in 2008. Well, what I'd forgotten was that I had been fairly diligent in upgrading the computer over the past two years plus, and the standard offerings came up short of what I already had. I had to go into gaming computer configurations to find something that would actually be an upgrade to my ailing computer. Worse for me was that I was feeling a bit desperate, having spent uncounted hours installing, uninstalling, and fixing things for the past several days with very little to show for it. I just wanted to get a replacement computer that I was happy with, get it set up, and get back to normal. We were also painting Judi's room and doing some heavy duty clean up of the walk-in closet/storage area in that room, so most of the upstairs was in complete disarray.

Saturday afternoon I rejected dozens of potential systems. Most frustrating was that stock systems nearly always skimp on the video card, and that wouldn't do. I ultimately settled on an Acer system that had all of the important components I was looking for, including a decent video card. It's a good system, far better than my old "main" computer. It's also very quiet and saves energy when idle. I probably paid too much for it, but it should last me a good long while.

I then spent the rest of the weekend installing and setting things up to suit me. I'm still not there as of Sunday afternoon, but I have email, and I have WoW. And a system that should work well with the video stuff I do (although that's not yet installed).

(end 21 Feb repeat)

The NEW Stuff!

When Wildshard learned on Friday (11 Mar) that there was only one more day left in the Darkmoon Fair, he knew Happy and Lost would have to work much faster on gathering the cards needed for the Darkmoon Tsunami Deck. That goal would soon get swept away, though, by the gathering clouds of yet another round of Computer Woes.

This time, it was the Mrs' computer that took it's turn causing trouble. In early March an unfortunate and unintentional break in the anti-virus protection opened the door to some very nasty malware. I spent several days tracking the monsters down and killing them. But they had taken a firm foothold, locking up the system and laughing at the pitiful software I had to fight them with. I took the computer to the professionals and a couple of days later it was declared clean. I took it home. It wasn't clean. The demons had returned. Note that at no time did I allow that computer access to the internet while testing it once I got it home. I took it back a second time. They went back after it with a vengeance. Declared it clean. I took it home. It still wouldn't function. On the third trip they were finally victorious. No more viruses. I took it home. It worked fine. For a day. And the system failed again. The malware was truly gone - or at least it could no longer be detected by anything I had or the shop had. It appeared that there had been collateral damage - the Windows operating system (O/S) was corrupted. A Windows repair failed. We then did a complete hard drive wipe and clean install of Windows. The computer ran for an hour and then locked down once again. We were out of ideas. So, a second computer (this one and my former main computer) was now pushing up daisies.

On Friday, 11 March I brought home a new computer (HP Pavilion) for the Mrs. It was around lunchtime and I had several hours available to get the computer set up and all the programs and files installed. It's a slow process, but everything went fine - until I opened Internet Explorer (the web browser). It gave me strange errors, or went into waiting mode and stayed there. Sometimes it would load a page from the internet - sometimes it would return pure unintelligible garbage. My other computer connected to the internet just fine. So did Beano's computer (the one I call "old and slow"). After finding nothing I could fix, I started calling. I called Cox cable - no issues with the cable connection. I called Motorola, the modem/router company - they did some diagnostics and confirmed that there was a good internet connection even if the new computer didn't seem to understand it was there. The problem seemed to be with Internet Explorer. I don't like Internet Explorer, but I needed it to function long enough for me to download and install the Firefox browser - but it just wouldn't function coherently long enough for me to do that.

I finally called HP, the computer manufacturer. I was pleasantly surprised when I got a human person after only about 15 minutes of waiting. Her name was Sara. She would be happy to help me. Little did she know what she was in for. It was going on 4pm when Sara joined the party. Her accent was a little hard to understand, but not as bad as some techs I've talked to on the phone. The only word that really had me stumped (and Sara showing just the tiniest bit of frustration) was "tombs." Tomb's? I kept repeating, and then she'd repeat it and it again sounded like "tombs." I finally asked her to spell it, and she spelled out "tools." I could almost here the pages turning as she read the scripts telling her what steps to take, and we took every single one to try and diagnose the problem, including redoing all the steps I had already done before I called. The browser refused to cooperate, being stubbornly even harder to understand that Sara. Running a Ping to websites on the net showed a clean, error free connection to the internet. But something was stopping traffic.

Sara had more scripts to try. She was immensely patient. She left for five minutes at a time to get more instructions and scripts. It was now closing in on 5pm, and Sara asked me to disconnect the power to the computer and then to hold down the power button for thirty seconds. When I asked her why she said that we were going to do a full recovery - a complete hard drive wipe and re-install using the installed recovery software that came with the computer.

All the time this has been going on I've been walking back and forth down the hall between the Mrs computer and my own. I was trying to get that Darkmoon set completed - and now there was also the growing specter of the 5:30pm raid Wild had signed up for. At 5:15pm Wild had time to get off a quick whisper to a friend I knew had signed up for the raid, letting him know I was running behind.

Once the terabyte hard drive reformatting was underway I knew I had some time. I contacted the raid leader, Fn, and explained my situation. I could envision Fn rolling his eyes heavenward and wondering, Why me? before replying "We really need you, Wild." I told him how much I wanted to be there and asked him to give me a little more time. It was 5:40pm.

The formatting finally completed and then a long series of installs began to put the system software back to it's factory defaults. I talked to Fn once again while that was going on. He was calling off the raid. Not because of Wild, thank goodness, but because he was short three raiders. Well, that didn't make me happy, either, but at least I wasn't the cause.

Finally, everything was set back to where it was when I carried it home from the store. We opened Internet Explorer. And it was still broke.

Sara then changed from her "let's fix it" scripts to her "let's get this dude off the phone ASAP" scripts because we obviously sold him a bum computer. Sara announced that the recovery module itself must be corrupted. Sara offered the suggestion that I run the recovery module and create the three recovery discs I would need to go through a second recovery attempt, as if that solved the problem. Well, I guess it solved her problem, but not mine. I pointed out that seconds before she had told me that the recovery module was corrupted - so wouldn't the discs that it would create also likely be corrupted?

She changed tack, and offered that she could mail me a set of good recovery discs absolutely free. I politely declined, and told her that what I really wanted was to return this broken piece of you know what to the store where I bought it from and have it replaced. I'm sure her script told her not to offer that particular solution, but I guess since I did the asking, she looked over her script, heaved a great sigh, and admitted that perhaps that would work.

What do I think happened to the computer? Sara's script led her to think that a static charge had its way with the hard drive, corrupting the browser and recovery software (and perhaps other things we would have found later). The holding down of the power button for thirty seconds was how you dissipate a static charge. I never knew that. My theory is that the computer was dead on arrival, and all that effort had been a waste of time. I'd officially killed my third computer.

Not wanting to give anyone a chance to back out of the replacement option, I was packing things back into the box before she had finished her closing remarks. It was 7pm. The store was open until 9pm. The Mrs and I both jumped in the car and headed for the store.

We came home with a new computer, exactly like the first one. It's still the box. I need to recuperate, and will tackle the new computer in the morning.

Saturday, 12 March - On Saturday I killed my fourth computer. To make a long story short I reached the exact same point as I had with the last computer, and began having the exact same problems. Calling HP wasn't an option. They would just walk through the same scripted support and I already knew that wouldn't work. I called my brother, who is a software tech but who has also run and maintained the business network where he works. We tossed around some ideas and my brother suggested it might be a bad cable cord, or a bad slot on the modem. Funny, the Mrs had mentioned that earlier. A test connection using a very low speed setting seemed to indicate that there was a cable cord problem. Maybe we were on to something. To check that out, I decided to set up the wireless settings since this computer had wireless connectivity as an option. The implementation went smoothly and everything looked fine - until I opened Internet Explorer. The prior problems still persisted. It wasn't the cable cord.

The poor Mrs. She had gone to pick up one of our cats from the vet, and when she came home she saw the latest computer all packed up and back in it's box. Or coffin.

Back to the store I went. By coincidence or serendipity I was waited on by the same employee who replaced the computer the night before. Her name was Marissa. She recognized me, and she recognized the box. Her eyebrows went up. "Yep," I said, "This one is bad, too. Same problem." Then I told her about the additional testing I'd done on the cable and wireless.

I wanted a refund. However, if there was a tech available to check out the computer I'd be willing to see if there were something I missed, and that I was very curious to know what the cause could be that would affect two new computers in the exact same way. Marissa was as curious about it as I was, and she got a tech to come out and check out the computer while we watched. I had mixed feelings about what I wanted to see happen: I wanted to be vindicated since I thought I had done everything possible to fix the problem; but then again, if there were a fix I had missed then I could take home the computer I had picked out to start with.

The tech started up the computer and hooked it into the store wireless LAN. The home page popped up - well, half of it did, anyway. We watched the screen do nothing else for a couple of minutes. I kept silent. He went into the "tombs" menu (uh, I mean the "Tools" menu) and changed some settings. The new page would still not complete loading. He Pinged his LAN. All was normal. He got sneaky and installed another browser, Firefox, from his thumb drive. It complained it had no internet connection.

The stoic faced tech said "Hmmm." Marissa couldn't stand it anymore. "So, is it working?" The tech said, "Well . . . sorta no."

Why two computers of the exact same brand and model would both break with the exact same symptoms will likely remain a mystery. The tech had two theories, but they were only theories. One, the network card could be bad on both computers. Or, and most likely in my opinion, the drive image impressed on the hard drive at the factory was faulty. That would mean that every computer in the group that got that specific image would all have the exact same fault.

It was time to negotiate. I told Marissa that I was not buying another HP of any type, but I still needed a computer. I wanted a computer with similar specs as my first choice and I wanted it at the same price. I knew from checking out every computer they had for sale on Friday night that they'd have a hard time matching both features and price. Marissa talked to the head of the PC department, and he turned me over to one of his salesman to find me what I wanted.

He hunted and he searched, and he finally showed me an Acer computer in one of those slimmed down cases. The features and specs were hands down better than those on the HP. However, small factor cases present some additional challenges. First, it is impossible - or at least very hard - to upgrade these computers. There isn't any extra room inside the case, and even if you could pry something in there it would likely mess with the already restricted air flow and cause heat issues. Given those two disadvantages, I thought that I needed extra protection in case problems arose. I asked him to add their two year extended warranty to the deal.

The salesman gulped and responded that the computer was already sale priced and was worth over $100 more than the computer I'd returned. I reminded him that the returned computer was the second faulty computer that had been sold to me in the last two days. He said he'd have to talk to his supervisor. I said sure. In the end I paid $40 over the price of the HP (without the extended warranty) to get the better Acer computer and the two year extended warranty. I was very happy with that deal.

And the best news of all? I had no trouble setting it up. The internet connection worked fine and I quickly ditched Internet Explorer and installed Firefox as the browser. All's well that ends well, but what a trip!

Sunday (13 Mar) - You are starting to wonder if this adventure will ever end, right? Yep, I spoke too soon. With the computer up and running, I needed to reload all the backed up data files from the external backup drive. It had been checked out as clean of viruses by the repair shop and myself when I got it back from the shop. Being extra cautious, however, I had the anti-virus software scan the external drive again. And it found a virus. Or should I say, viruses.

But I cleaned them out and yes, I can say, finally, that the Mrs has her computer back.