Lessons In Hardware / OS Troubleshooting

Esther Schindler writes "We like to imagine that every Microsoft OS installation will work just as well as the company promises. When things don't work out, identifying and remedying the case of failure can be time-consuming and frustrating. This lesson in how to determine why Windows 7 didn't install may help you troubleshoot a problem of your own, and save you from a Lost Weekend. Maybe you'll find this account useful all on its own. But the real key here is that the author is Ed Tittel — who's written over 100 books. If this hardware geek spends days solving a CPU-meets-Windows 7 problem, what chance do mere mortals have?"

Comments

100 books?

[cranesan]

I'm a little suspicious; how much of an expert can you be writing 100 books on a variety of subjects.

Reminds me of a tech instructor I had who proudly informed the class he teaches oracle classes, mysql classes, sql server classes, cisco classes, juniper classes, .net development classes, php, etc..... Yeah he couldn't answer any basic questions that strayed from the text book in front of us.

Harware issue? Welcome to Linux

[ben_kelley]

If you have never had a hardware issue when installing Linux on a machine you must be very lucky.

"Most things work fine" people tell me, which is true. The trouble is that the chances of you owning something that doesn't work is relatively high. (There's probably something from my statistics course that explains why that is, but I have so far managed to suppress that memory.)

After having rebuilt a Mac with OS X, and rebuilt a laptop with Ubuntu 9.04, I was surprised at how smooth and the Ubuntu install was. Of course that was until I wanted to use my webcam with Ubuntu. These kinds of problems get very difficult very fast in Linux. When 9.04 first came out there was a dependency problem that meant that you couldn't easily get some webcams working.

To be fair, that problem is most likely sorted out now, and a non-Apple webcam would have needed a (very easy to install) driver on OS X as well. The point is, Windows and hardware generally work very well.

Re:Harware issue? Welcome to Linux

[jedidiah]

There was another fellow that mentioned the idea of staying away from the top and the bottom.

Avoid the dregs and the bleeding edge.

That middle will probably me much more reliable under Windows and more likely to be supported on Linux (or even MacOS).

No one cares enough about the dregs to support them under Linux or MacOS and the bleeding edge stuff is just too new.

That approach does pretty well regardless of OS today and did pretty well 16 years ago too.

The problem with "statistics" is that any give PC isn't really random. It's a reflection of it's owner. It may be a dreg, a poster boy for bleeding edge gamer conspicuous consumption or something that's more moderate.

"When 9.04 first came out" is covered by this rule actually.

Re:What I love here is the part where he

[Jezza]

I temper this approach with the "this is easy as hell and very quick". So even if I think it is something, if there is something else it could be that's really quick to try I'll ignore my "brilliance" and try that. What is amazing is how often there isn't actually one problem, but two. Also helps if you have a similar working system that you can take the components from (so you know that this or that doodah actually works).

My lesson.

[w0mprat]

Just last night I fixed my parents computer in one of those long fixes that turns out to be the most fundamentally trivial things. This is why this is not my main occupation.

Basicly they had a reccently built custom Windows 7 + Ubuntu PC that had begun randomly shutting down, often minutes after it had been powered up.

Ok first thing, any obvious errors or cicumstances? No, it would just randomly power off. Windows event logs showed kernel power events, no specific driver, service or app crashing anywhere. Linux was the same. Not a thermal issue cpu + gpu temps nominal and stress test din't immediatley cause a crash.

Suspecting a power or a motherboard issue, first checked and re-seated things internally. It still occured.

Removed extraneous cards, connectors and drives. No result. It would even happen sitting in BIOS setup. Have ruled out a number of problems.

Checked for electrical shorts, poor voltage etc.

Dying power supply? Overloading or shorting? Nope, all voltages nominal, and it was brand new.

I was about to try a spare power supply and a thought occured to me..

It's almost as if the reset switch was being hit, but it wasn't even close to being knocked at any point and the switch otherwise worked fine. Then I knocked the case and the system reset. Yep, the reset switch was faulty, jolting it even slightly would reset. Who needs a reset switch since Vista anyway? Unplugged it from mainboard. Solved.

I decided not to even joke about charging my Dad for two hours of my time.

Chances are if he paid someone to do it they wouldn't necessarily have found the fault that quickly, and he'd be hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

The lesson in troubleshooting? Um... I'm not sure.