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Okay, the short of it is, the PC is back up and I'm working again.
For those that are interested in the details, I'll give the scoop behind this cut.
So remember this kids. It's backup time. Store your files somewhere else. Tonight. Before you go to bed.
For those that are interested in the details, I'll give the scoop behind this cut.
Okay, got home thursday evening, and placed the PC in my office as I always do. I powered it up, and walked away, to grab a few winks, because I was half dead on my feet. When it was time to get going again, I wanted to make a quick printout of something to bring along to the doctor's office (a visit for the Little Man). I walked into the office and Blue Screen of Death. And a particularly nasty one that had almost no information, other than Fatal System Error. Yay fun. Okay, reboot the system, it goes through the motions of checking the disk and files, etc, etc. It "recovers" and then reboots to load windows. BSoD. Now, I didn't have the time to mess around, we needed to make the doctors appointment. So I left it until later. I decided to try again, but this time, I went into the Setup mode on the Bios. This prompted that there was something strange about the memory (should have paid attention right there) and I had the option to get in to the Diagnostics partition. I figured, why not. If something is broken and I need to call it in for replacement parts, they'll want to have me run the diags anyway.
I run the comprehensive diagnostics. Two hours later...everything passes. According to the diagnostics, nothing is wrong. (Liar) So I try one last time. Boots up: BSoD. Okay, that's it for the night. Got much sympathy from the Lovely Wife, but, well, was rather frustrated. I have backups of a good chunk of my current work, but not everything. I only have a 1 GB Mem stick, so I can't backup everything I need to it, just the critical bits. (Plus there's software that takes up at least 1/3 of the memory stick in itself.)
Okay, next day, off to work I go, and I drop it in my dock (that was the last place the PC was working) and try booting. BSoD. Okay, I expected that. Odds were really small it would have worked, but, it was one of those things I had to try, because otherwise, I would have felt stupid if it had been the answer. So off to the PC Bench. Time to see if I can perform a recovery with the Windows CD. Obtained said CD. Got the PC to boot from CD, and off I go. Looks good, looks good, BSoD. Okay, at least this time, the BSoD tells me something different. Tells my that pci.sys is having an issue. Now, in my experience, I never trust windows. So I try it a second time, because I've seen things in the past flat out fail on first run, then on second run using the exact CD and everything just work. Why? I don't know. In this case, no dice.
So, I remember that the previous night there was something about a memory error. This BSoD screen also mentions something about reseating memory. Why? I don't know, pci.sys doesn't seem like it's directly related to memory, but whatever. So, flip over the PC, open the spot for the memory card....and realize that this slot is empty. Because I only bought one memory stick with this laptop, so that if I need more later, I have space to add it. What that means, however, is that the memory card is under the keyboard. I hate having to take off my keyboard. Tedious. That's part of why I work with servers instead of PCs. Servers mean more hand room to work, and you usually don't have to pull apart your keyboard to get to the memory. (Yeah, okay, there are always those pizza boxes where there are just as awkward placement of parts.) So, I take out the chip, use a little canned air to blow out the socket, and reseat the chip firmly. Put everything back together, and try again. BSoD. Same error, no new info. So, maybe, think I, the chip itself is bad. Fine, one of the PC tech's helps me grab another model that has the same memory cards. (Only we SysAdmins have this particular model, because I like having the larger screen, so there are no spares.)
This PC has a chip in the secondary slot, so I don't have to pull apart the whole keyboard, and I get it out no real fuss. But, it's just about the minimum you need for XP. Fine, I'm just testing the theory, right? So, off again comes my keyboard, then swap the memory, then back on with the keyboard, and boot. BSoD. Okay, it's not the memory, I say quite firmly. So, I yank it back out, put everything back to original parts, and stow the other PC. I'm now thinking I'm not going to recover to a working install. Great. Now it's time to start planning for simple data recovery, and then I'll just wipe, and install from scratch. Not fun, but I've done it before. And I'm at work, which means I have a spare laptop here I can use while I'm working on this PC, so I'm not completely out of commission.
I pull out the hard drive, and head over to the PC they have at the bench so you can hook up a disk as a slave, boot up, and copy files off onto a network share. And I notice that I'm holding a SATA disk, and the cables they have are for IDE only. Even though it will work for the laptop disks, it will only work for the older models. The new models all come with SATA. With only a few months of working with these under their belt, I guess we haven't had to recover a disk yet. That means we don't have the cable necessary. Sigh.
Now, I walk to my desk, get out said loaner, and grab my P2V disks from VMware. While I'm at my desk, I glance at the toggle switch on my desk, to make sure that it's still in the MORE MAGIC position, and that no one has messed with it. It is, though, how could I prove someone didn't come through and flick it a few times? I'm certain that I glared around at some of the other admins, though I'm also certain no one noticed.
Into the back, and I swap in the P2V boot disk. Up comes linux. A champion. It loads. The P2V screen comes up, and I start to navigate. It sees the disk. Great. I click forward, and I hit a snag. P2V sees the hard drive. But it doesn't see the network card. Okay, I'm cursing. It's an older version of P2V, I have a more recent version downloaded, but I have to burn a boot disk. Not a problem. I commence CD burning. Then, I remember, that it means I have to update the server to the same version. Copy the software from the admin share to the server. Run the install. Install fails, it sees the prior version, and requires me to uninstall it first.
Okay. Hello all software vendors who will never read this blog. If you create software and you have an update that is only a minor revision, please make your install handle all the work. Why on earth should I have to go into Control Panel, and Add/Remove programs and uninstall your software, to then kick off your install and install it again. It didn't require me to reboot between the uninstall and reinstall. Heck, can't your software when it detects the damned prior version just kick off the uninstall, instead of requiring me to leave the install software, open up several windows, run an uninstall, then go back to kick off your stuff again from scratch? Why you wasting my time? (Okay, maybe that's me being greedy, but I still think it's bad design.)
Okay, CD burned, software upgraded. Try again. Still does not see the network card. Humpfh. Okay, when did I download this version? Oh early last year some time? All right, let's check the website. Indeed! A newer version. Download iso image for boot disk, and upgrade software for the server. (Yes, this version too requires me to uninstall the software on my own before allowing me to intall this edition, despite going from 2.1.1 to 2.1.2 That's just pathetic.) All right. Third try is the charm? Apparently not. Still doesn't see the network card. Now, okay, I could take the time to figure out the drivers, track them down, etc, but that gets pretty darn frustrating. So I bitch to one of the PC techs. (Who has been working on a billion other things.) He asks me which version of the XP CD was I trying. The standard one, I reply. Aha! He says. That PC you have probably wants SP2. And he happens to have a merged disk that has XP SP2 built right in. He runs off and gets it. We give it a try. After a few tense moments, it gets past the part where it was failing before.
It works.
I sigh deeply, thank him for his keen insight, and decide to let this chug away at repairing windows while I head off to lunch an hour late.
Get back from lunch, and realize that it had stopped, waiting for me to input the damned Install Key. FLGHADKRHAMD! (No, that's not the key.) Instead of coming back to an almost finished install, I have to sit through it all. Fine. I kick that off, and head into the datacenter, to do a little busy work that I can accomplish in there. Watching a PC install, not my favorite thing. So, great. I get a few things done, nothing earth shattering. But, it's friday, so, the rule of don't make major changes before the weekend applies. Mainly, I just do some trivial maintenance, the kind of thing that needs doing but you usually don't have spare time to do. Well, I found that spare time.
Back I go, and the PC is just about done. Great. It goes into a final reboot to load windows. And, I get an error about the memory changing. Well, yeah, I had changed it back, but what's this? Another error about the memory? (Sign number two I should have noticed.) I hit F1 to plug on. It does too, and it boots. I get the three finger salute, and log in. Error that my profile is missing. Great. But, it loads. Except it's taking forever to load. No really. I mean I can count thirty to forty seconds between the appearance of each icon on my desktop. It takes at least 15 minutes before everything has loaded up, and I can get control of the mouse. Clearly something is not right. I try to launch something, and it takes over two minutes to successfully double click. Not good. Now, I suspect there's more to that memory error than I suspected. Now I try to C-A-D and check out what's running on the pc. Big mistake. Now, it's trying to open up task manager. That takes ten minutes. All right, I'm ready to give up, and yank out that memory chip again. But it takes another twenty mintues to shutdown the PC. That was almost an hour, to boot up, launch task manager, and shut down. Yuck.
So, once again, with the memory rodeo. My least favorite part. But, I decide, I don't want minimum memory, so I actually go through the pain of removing both keyboards, so I can get the extra memory from under the other keyboard to use until we can get replacement memory, which will hopefully be in by monday, but, you just don't know. I boot the PC, and now, it's more like itself. Loads up to the desktop in less than a minute. I'm still having profile issues. But, I can deal with that later. I quickly make a backup to memory stick of important files. (I had one from about a week ago or so.) Then, I have to re-download all the Microsoft patches, and apply those. 64 of them, including the upgrade to IE 7.
I heave a great sigh of relief, that things appear to be working fine. I haven't checked every single app yet. But the important bits do seem to be working. There's more cleanup to do, but that can happen on monday. Yes, this event effectively dominated my work day. I got small things done, and thankfully nothing major was pending on me for today, or this weekend. But at least, I am nominally back in the game.
Still, on the way home, I bought an external HD to store backups of important files, for now, and the future. I can't afford to play it too safe, I think. Besides, memory sticks only hold so much. Even if they are up in the multi-GB range these days.
Whew.
I run the comprehensive diagnostics. Two hours later...everything passes. According to the diagnostics, nothing is wrong. (Liar) So I try one last time. Boots up: BSoD. Okay, that's it for the night. Got much sympathy from the Lovely Wife, but, well, was rather frustrated. I have backups of a good chunk of my current work, but not everything. I only have a 1 GB Mem stick, so I can't backup everything I need to it, just the critical bits. (Plus there's software that takes up at least 1/3 of the memory stick in itself.)
Okay, next day, off to work I go, and I drop it in my dock (that was the last place the PC was working) and try booting. BSoD. Okay, I expected that. Odds were really small it would have worked, but, it was one of those things I had to try, because otherwise, I would have felt stupid if it had been the answer. So off to the PC Bench. Time to see if I can perform a recovery with the Windows CD. Obtained said CD. Got the PC to boot from CD, and off I go. Looks good, looks good, BSoD. Okay, at least this time, the BSoD tells me something different. Tells my that pci.sys is having an issue. Now, in my experience, I never trust windows. So I try it a second time, because I've seen things in the past flat out fail on first run, then on second run using the exact CD and everything just work. Why? I don't know. In this case, no dice.
So, I remember that the previous night there was something about a memory error. This BSoD screen also mentions something about reseating memory. Why? I don't know, pci.sys doesn't seem like it's directly related to memory, but whatever. So, flip over the PC, open the spot for the memory card....and realize that this slot is empty. Because I only bought one memory stick with this laptop, so that if I need more later, I have space to add it. What that means, however, is that the memory card is under the keyboard. I hate having to take off my keyboard. Tedious. That's part of why I work with servers instead of PCs. Servers mean more hand room to work, and you usually don't have to pull apart your keyboard to get to the memory. (Yeah, okay, there are always those pizza boxes where there are just as awkward placement of parts.) So, I take out the chip, use a little canned air to blow out the socket, and reseat the chip firmly. Put everything back together, and try again. BSoD. Same error, no new info. So, maybe, think I, the chip itself is bad. Fine, one of the PC tech's helps me grab another model that has the same memory cards. (Only we SysAdmins have this particular model, because I like having the larger screen, so there are no spares.)
This PC has a chip in the secondary slot, so I don't have to pull apart the whole keyboard, and I get it out no real fuss. But, it's just about the minimum you need for XP. Fine, I'm just testing the theory, right? So, off again comes my keyboard, then swap the memory, then back on with the keyboard, and boot. BSoD. Okay, it's not the memory, I say quite firmly. So, I yank it back out, put everything back to original parts, and stow the other PC. I'm now thinking I'm not going to recover to a working install. Great. Now it's time to start planning for simple data recovery, and then I'll just wipe, and install from scratch. Not fun, but I've done it before. And I'm at work, which means I have a spare laptop here I can use while I'm working on this PC, so I'm not completely out of commission.
I pull out the hard drive, and head over to the PC they have at the bench so you can hook up a disk as a slave, boot up, and copy files off onto a network share. And I notice that I'm holding a SATA disk, and the cables they have are for IDE only. Even though it will work for the laptop disks, it will only work for the older models. The new models all come with SATA. With only a few months of working with these under their belt, I guess we haven't had to recover a disk yet. That means we don't have the cable necessary. Sigh.
Now, I walk to my desk, get out said loaner, and grab my P2V disks from VMware. While I'm at my desk, I glance at the toggle switch on my desk, to make sure that it's still in the MORE MAGIC position, and that no one has messed with it. It is, though, how could I prove someone didn't come through and flick it a few times? I'm certain that I glared around at some of the other admins, though I'm also certain no one noticed.
Into the back, and I swap in the P2V boot disk. Up comes linux. A champion. It loads. The P2V screen comes up, and I start to navigate. It sees the disk. Great. I click forward, and I hit a snag. P2V sees the hard drive. But it doesn't see the network card. Okay, I'm cursing. It's an older version of P2V, I have a more recent version downloaded, but I have to burn a boot disk. Not a problem. I commence CD burning. Then, I remember, that it means I have to update the server to the same version. Copy the software from the admin share to the server. Run the install. Install fails, it sees the prior version, and requires me to uninstall it first.
Okay. Hello all software vendors who will never read this blog. If you create software and you have an update that is only a minor revision, please make your install handle all the work. Why on earth should I have to go into Control Panel, and Add/Remove programs and uninstall your software, to then kick off your install and install it again. It didn't require me to reboot between the uninstall and reinstall. Heck, can't your software when it detects the damned prior version just kick off the uninstall, instead of requiring me to leave the install software, open up several windows, run an uninstall, then go back to kick off your stuff again from scratch? Why you wasting my time? (Okay, maybe that's me being greedy, but I still think it's bad design.)
Okay, CD burned, software upgraded. Try again. Still does not see the network card. Humpfh. Okay, when did I download this version? Oh early last year some time? All right, let's check the website. Indeed! A newer version. Download iso image for boot disk, and upgrade software for the server. (Yes, this version too requires me to uninstall the software on my own before allowing me to intall this edition, despite going from 2.1.1 to 2.1.2 That's just pathetic.) All right. Third try is the charm? Apparently not. Still doesn't see the network card. Now, okay, I could take the time to figure out the drivers, track them down, etc, but that gets pretty darn frustrating. So I bitch to one of the PC techs. (Who has been working on a billion other things.) He asks me which version of the XP CD was I trying. The standard one, I reply. Aha! He says. That PC you have probably wants SP2. And he happens to have a merged disk that has XP SP2 built right in. He runs off and gets it. We give it a try. After a few tense moments, it gets past the part where it was failing before.
It works.
I sigh deeply, thank him for his keen insight, and decide to let this chug away at repairing windows while I head off to lunch an hour late.
Get back from lunch, and realize that it had stopped, waiting for me to input the damned Install Key. FLGHADKRHAMD! (No, that's not the key.) Instead of coming back to an almost finished install, I have to sit through it all. Fine. I kick that off, and head into the datacenter, to do a little busy work that I can accomplish in there. Watching a PC install, not my favorite thing. So, great. I get a few things done, nothing earth shattering. But, it's friday, so, the rule of don't make major changes before the weekend applies. Mainly, I just do some trivial maintenance, the kind of thing that needs doing but you usually don't have spare time to do. Well, I found that spare time.
Back I go, and the PC is just about done. Great. It goes into a final reboot to load windows. And, I get an error about the memory changing. Well, yeah, I had changed it back, but what's this? Another error about the memory? (Sign number two I should have noticed.) I hit F1 to plug on. It does too, and it boots. I get the three finger salute, and log in. Error that my profile is missing. Great. But, it loads. Except it's taking forever to load. No really. I mean I can count thirty to forty seconds between the appearance of each icon on my desktop. It takes at least 15 minutes before everything has loaded up, and I can get control of the mouse. Clearly something is not right. I try to launch something, and it takes over two minutes to successfully double click. Not good. Now, I suspect there's more to that memory error than I suspected. Now I try to C-A-D and check out what's running on the pc. Big mistake. Now, it's trying to open up task manager. That takes ten minutes. All right, I'm ready to give up, and yank out that memory chip again. But it takes another twenty mintues to shutdown the PC. That was almost an hour, to boot up, launch task manager, and shut down. Yuck.
So, once again, with the memory rodeo. My least favorite part. But, I decide, I don't want minimum memory, so I actually go through the pain of removing both keyboards, so I can get the extra memory from under the other keyboard to use until we can get replacement memory, which will hopefully be in by monday, but, you just don't know. I boot the PC, and now, it's more like itself. Loads up to the desktop in less than a minute. I'm still having profile issues. But, I can deal with that later. I quickly make a backup to memory stick of important files. (I had one from about a week ago or so.) Then, I have to re-download all the Microsoft patches, and apply those. 64 of them, including the upgrade to IE 7.
I heave a great sigh of relief, that things appear to be working fine. I haven't checked every single app yet. But the important bits do seem to be working. There's more cleanup to do, but that can happen on monday. Yes, this event effectively dominated my work day. I got small things done, and thankfully nothing major was pending on me for today, or this weekend. But at least, I am nominally back in the game.
Still, on the way home, I bought an external HD to store backups of important files, for now, and the future. I can't afford to play it too safe, I think. Besides, memory sticks only hold so much. Even if they are up in the multi-GB range these days.
Whew.
So remember this kids. It's backup time. Store your files somewhere else. Tonight. Before you go to bed.
