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MachSabre Profile
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Tech support time


Okay, here's the situation. Last few days, my comp has been really buggy. The other day, I left the computer alone and I came back, the screen was blank. Like a black screen you'd get during start-up... Except nothing was on it. No cursor, text or anything. Nothing was responsive or anything. I cold restarted the computer, and it turned back in fine.

At this point I did a viral scan, a malware scan and a spybot scan. All came up with nothing.

Then last night, I was reading a page (specifically the Young Justice kickstarter page in Sporkbot's thread) and it did it again. This time it went all black, and there was no reaction either. Then I cold restarted it again, and nothing. Black screen with nothing on it. I unplugged it, and gave it a few seconds and then replugged it back up, and restated it again, and it loaded just fine.

At this point in time, I suspected that there might be a drover error or some update went screwy, so I did a system restore back to about a week and a half ago. Then did the usual scans. Then I did a Disk Defragmenting and a Check Disk Error scan. And then it seemed alright. Of course it seemed all right last time.)

Today, after starting it up, I was looking at a page on Scans Daily and it crashed again... But this time, there was a Blue Screen, with text on it. And it restarted and booted up just fine.

The computer didn't overheat, as the temperature has been pretty cool here for the last couple of days, and I did recently blow the dust out of the computer insides, so it's not that. At this point in time, I'm perplexed.

Any ideas?

(I'll keep note if it happens again and what I was doing.)

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5/11/2013, 2:57 pm Link to this post Send Email to MachSabre   Send PM to MachSabre AIM
 
iacon45 Profile
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Re: Tech support time


The blue screen is never a really good sign. It could be one of several things. It could be a bad power supply but the blue screen might mean your CPU or hard drive is going out. If you have one near, probably the best thing to do is take the unit to a computer shop so they can diagnose it
5/11/2013, 3:04 pm Link to this post Send Email to iacon45   Send PM to iacon45
 
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Re: Tech support time


This sounds very much like what happened with my laptop years ago. When it first started happening, I believe my Dad gave it to a work-friend, and I think he swapped out the hard drive. ('Course, I got the blue screen of death again, and have since gone desktop.)

Cold-restarts may be adding to the problem; I remember being told by some technician that improperly turning off the computer did physical and irreparable damage to the machine (note, that was years ago, and I don't know if more recent technological advances have address this issue).

I agree with iacon: take it to a repair shop, see what they have to say. Next time the screen goes blue, you COULD try noting the message and any pertinent numbers/code applicable to the error, but I found that those digits changed some with each occurrence. It may be as simple as getting a new drive, and transferring your data. It'd be a heck of a lot cheaper than getting a new computer.

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5/11/2013, 5:05 pm Link to this post Send Email to SporkBot   Send PM to SporkBot
 
MachSabre Profile
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Re: Tech support time


I think its safe to say something is borked. It crashed again just sitting there doing nothing. And again not even five minutes later trying to. Copy files to the external harddrive. (I got it copied eventually.) Typing this on the Kindle and I'll hook up my old comp tomorrow. Now I just got to decide the next course of action.

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5/11/2013, 11:49 pm Link to this post Send Email to MachSabre   Send PM to MachSabre AIM
 
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Re: Tech support time


Oooorrrr it might be something else equally as frustrating.

So it crashed again just trying to look something up, and then I went to the Event Viewer and found that there was an error stating:

quote:

The nvUpdatusService service was unable to log on as .\UpdatusUser with the currently configured password due to the following error:
Logon failure: the specified account password has expired.



And the time for these errors were consistent with each and every crash over the last few days. So I looked up the information about how to fix it, and I reset some password to "never expire" and let it go. It's been a hour and it hasn't crashed again... So crossing my fingers that it works. But if it fails... I'm prepared at least.

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5/12/2013, 2:15 am Link to this post Send Email to MachSabre   Send PM to MachSabre AIM
 
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Re: Tech support time


Or not.

So after starting it again today, it crashed again. Once again, the computer was just sitting just fine all by itself. No Blue Screen this time, just a crash and restart.

Well not quite...

It restarted... Did the usual beep at startup, started to load... Failed... Beeped a bunch of times repeatedly... Then tried again, and started up. It requested to do some repair tool, which I ran. And then it started up just fine.

I'm pretty much expecting this thing to crash again. I'm going to wait and see if it crashes again today. If it goes the rest of the day without crashing... I'll try tomorrow. And repeat the waiting. If it crashes again, I'll take it up to the computer repair place and have them run a diagnostic so I at least know what I'm dealing with.

Fortunately, I've backed everything important up. (Good thing I'm not doing a comic right now.)

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5/12/2013, 1:26 pm Link to this post Send Email to MachSabre   Send PM to MachSabre AIM
 
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Re: Tech support time


Yeah...I was writing my book when it started happening to me, and it pissed me right the blazes off (but considering how that turned out, maybe God was trying to tell me something...).

Last edited by SporkBot, 5/12/2013, 1:52 pm


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5/12/2013, 1:48 pm Link to this post Send Email to SporkBot   Send PM to SporkBot
 
MachSabre Profile
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Re: Tech support time


New hard drive was installed in tonight. It's safe to say, that was probably the problem. So, now I just have to go through and reset all my preferences.

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5/20/2013, 1:03 am Link to this post Send Email to MachSabre   Send PM to MachSabre AIM
 
MachSabre Profile
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Re: Tech support time


So, ha-hah! Little bit of an update with this one.

So not long after I installed the new harddrive, I was still having crashing problems. It got ridiculous about a week ago, Sunday, when the damn thing was crashing on me (no blue screen) for doing nothing at all. I mean, it was freezing on me while playing YouTube or Blip videos, or playing simple flash games like Tetris. I mean, it's not like I was playing Crysis. Then it started crashing on me while doing something as simple as reading a news page. (TFW2005 of all things.) So with that, I decided I had to take it in.

End result? My graphics card was overheating. It was running at 90°C doing menial tasks. (For those that don't know, 90° is what you'd expect if you were seriously pushing the computer graphics like a mofo, playing Far Cry or whatever. WoW averages around 80°.)

So I replaced it, and talked to the shop guy about upgrading my ram. Ends up that even though I have 4 gigs of ram, Windows 7 32-bit will only allow you to use 3 gigs of it. So I asked about upgrading to 64-bit. Turns out my installation of Win 7 32 was somewhat corrupted and needed a full reinstall. (It didn't cost me anything thankfully.) So I when ahead and did it. The shop took their sweet ass time on it, but they did a good job. (And it wasn't expensive.)

So I got the computer home today, after five or six days without it... And I started installing the programs back on it. And THAT'S when I discovered there's some stuff that works on the "inferior" 32 bits... That won't work on "superior" 64-bits. Like my scanner and printer drivers. They never made drivers for them for 64.

THIS. IS. !@#$. RETARDED.

So I had to go out and buy a new printer/scanner with money I didn't have so I can scan in artwork for commissions that someone paid for already.

Currently, *knocks on wood* the computer is working fine now. Thanks to Adobe offering Photoshop CS2 Suite for free, I'm all set up and running as good as before. (Sure, CS2 is a step or two down from CS5, but for what I use Photoshop for... It's negligible. In fact, it's more comfortable for me because it's more like Photoshop 7 which I used for six to seven years.)

Anyway, I'm set up now. And thanks to this stupid bullshit, and to the problems I've heard about Windows 8, and even the stuff they've recently backtracked on with the X-Box One... Microsoft has pretty much guaranteed me that my next computer WILL indeed be a Mac. (Actually, my next one will be a Chromebook. THEN a Mac.) My computer is currently as powerful as a high end Mac Mini, but I'm sure in a few years, the Mac Mini basics will make this thing look like a freakin' turtle, and that's when I'll jump on it.

Hopefully by then, Adobe will get their heads outta their asses about the Creative Cloud !@#$.

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6/21/2013, 9:02 pm Link to this post Send Email to MachSabre   Send PM to MachSabre AIM
 
Trium Shockwave Profile
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Re: Tech support time


The thing with the drivers is that you can't load 32-bit code (the driver) into a 64-bit process (the OS kernel). You have the same issue if you try to, say, load a 32-bit Photoshop plugin when running PS in 64-bit mode. Which you have to do if you want PS to be able to use more than 4GB of RAM for itself (4GB total between physical and virtual).

So, that's just a fact of life as we have moved from 32-bit to 64. Macs had the same challenge. Apple, however, has been working on phasing OS X into 64-bit since launching the G5 towers back in '03. Piece by piece OS X was rebuilt for 64-bit, while still maintaining the ability to run on 32-bit systems. There was never a "64-bit" vs. "32-bit" OS X. 10.5 even ran the same copy of the OS on both PowerPC and Intel, how fuckin crazy is that? At one point they introduced the option to run 64-bit kernel if you flipped a hidden OS setting. Later, newer machines started booting it by default. Finally with 10.7, 32-bit machines were cut off and by 10.8 the last vestiges of the OS were fully 64-bit. Overall, this transition happened a lot more smoothly than it did for MS. Most Mac users never even noticed. That's what you are able to do when you control the entire platform, hardware and software.

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In case you don't read enough of my BS here:
http://applesanddango.wordpress.com
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6/23/2013, 12:48 pm Link to this post Send Email to Trium Shockwave   Send PM to Trium Shockwave AIM
 


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