BlueWolf's Howl

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February 10, 2008

Strange Problem

For quite some time I've been having a problem with my computer. It would run for a while and then some app would error out. There were a lot of freeze ups and I was constantly having to reboot. The screen was acting funny and slow. It was a real pain. The computer was getting to the point of barely usable.

Since I use my computer quite a bit, I really didn't have the time to properly troubleshoot the issue. I worked around it and figured I would get to it when I got a chance. So one night last week, I took the time and thoroughly updated SpyBot and ran a check on my system. It turned up nothing. I took another night and thoroughly updated Symantec and ran a scan. It took hours - but turned up nothing. It was quite frustrating.

This weekend I got a bigger block of time to work on it. I had resigned myself to having to format the entire hard drive and reinstall everything. Luckily I developed the habit of keeping the OS on one drive and the data on another. It would be long and tedious, but I didn't have to worry about losing any data. Friday night I started to make my list. I was checking everything that was on the computer so that I could duplicate it and not miss any apps. One thing I find annoying is having to do a task and needing to re-install the app first. As I was gathering the information I ended up eventually on the screen saver settings. == I had selected the CCIE study screen saver == How nice, but I never remember seeing any test questions when the screen saver comes on. Oh yeah, I haven't seen the screen saver come on - ever. I changed it and no more screen freezes or app errors. Lesson learned.

The time that I saved helped to move a few more things on my 'to do' list along rather nicely. I finally yanked the SPARC10 out of the closet and tried to get that working. That's going to take a bit of troubleshooting, but having it out is a step in the right direction. I know it works - and it has a fresh install of Solaris (can't remember what version) that I put on it last time I played with it. I'll get that rolling eventually. So then I turned my attention to the Linux box. Since now I have a router connecting to the DSL, I don't have to fiddle with getting PPoE running on it. I had previously installed RH7 and was going to update it. Yeah...that's an old version. Either the pages that *used to* work moved or were removed. Then the lightbulb went on: I have a better computer - I can install Fedora. Usually I put Linux on my 'spare' computer. Usually it's a computer that has very little cpu or memory. Quite often I've seen some of the older comps choke when trying to load Fedora, so I use an older version. Then I run out of time and never get to update. This time I got lucky. Everyone is happily computing on the best and fastest systems possible. And that leaves me with a PIII with 256 RAM. Wow. That's the fastest system I've ever had as a 'spare.' And instead of trying to shove a system on a 2 gig hard drive, right now I have two 8 gig hard drives. I went for the whole enchillada - complete install with all packages. And it's on the Internet. And it has two nic cards in it. I can finally use that computer to *do* something... [I have a 'project' that I've been wanting to work on for a long time now. Perhaps I can finally do it.]

Then I updated/finished the Sniffer laptop for work. It has:
Basic, but updated install of Win2K Pro (unneeded services set to manual)
Word and Excel (basic install - most options installed on first use or not used)
Wireshark
PuTTy
Telnet (the old one)
A small text comparison proggie that I picked up in my travels
Edit Pad

Quite the productive weekend. I'm really enjoying the Fedora computer. I'll have to put more about that one soon.

Posted by BlueWolf on February 10, 2008 07:19 AM