Computer woes
Computer woes
(OP)
I will preface this by saying it is a rant.
Well today is one of those DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THAT days , I was having problems with Microsoft Edge constantly dumping me out of web sites including this one and saying we have tried several time to load this website ,and we know you have better things to do than watch this page constantly reload ,so why don't you try again later. It got so bad I could not even get and stay on Microsoft's trouble shooting page. However I found that internet explorer would work albeit slowly . So I get through to their trouble shooting line and they suggest resetting windows 10 . Ok so I select the option that says keep all your files and folders and do it. Big mistake The good news is that now Microsoft Edge works perfectly, the bad news is that the reset wiped out my Alibre drafting program , Microsoft office, My adobe Pdf generators, and the Silverlight files needed for Solidworks Too late I find my backup files have the data , but not the programs . Now I have to find the installation discs and spend half a day tomorrow putting all of that stuff back in.
Short answer DONT RESET WINDOWS 10 unless you really have to. Guess how I found out.
B.E.
Well today is one of those DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THAT days , I was having problems with Microsoft Edge constantly dumping me out of web sites including this one and saying we have tried several time to load this website ,and we know you have better things to do than watch this page constantly reload ,so why don't you try again later. It got so bad I could not even get and stay on Microsoft's trouble shooting page. However I found that internet explorer would work albeit slowly . So I get through to their trouble shooting line and they suggest resetting windows 10 . Ok so I select the option that says keep all your files and folders and do it. Big mistake The good news is that now Microsoft Edge works perfectly, the bad news is that the reset wiped out my Alibre drafting program , Microsoft office, My adobe Pdf generators, and the Silverlight files needed for Solidworks Too late I find my backup files have the data , but not the programs . Now I have to find the installation discs and spend half a day tomorrow putting all of that stuff back in.
Short answer DONT RESET WINDOWS 10 unless you really have to. Guess how I found out.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.





RE: Computer woes
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
RE: Computer woes
--
JHG
RE: Computer woes
I agree with you, drawoh, although I'm only halfway there.
EDMS Australia
RE: Computer woes
I have actually uninstalled the browsers.
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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
RE: Computer woes
RE: Computer woes
wishing you good luck in the time-consuming & frustrating process of software re-installation.
RE: Computer woes
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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
RE: Computer woes
After fiddling with this thing for half a day I now have Microsoft office 2010 reinstalled from my installation discs after getting messages from Microsoft about why do you want to do that ,we have a better one. Then they sent me a feedback questionare asking me if I would recommend Microsoft programs ? My answer was not pretty. I still have a bunch of re construction to do. Got Norton back in and more programs to find license keys for. I think at this stage I am over the worst of it.
Thanks to all who listened and did not point and laugh.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Computer woes
It was dark screen (screen saving?) so I tapped a few keys. The keyboard lit the Hard drive light flickered and the screen stayed dark the laptop went catatonic. No lights.
"Dang it must've just standby'd", I'm thinking.
Hit the power button. N O T H I N G.. I have 2 intense days of work just done on it and two hours in the field today of detailed PLC setups with VPNs and many configurations.
I close the lid, open it. Nothing.
Hold the power button for 20 seconds. Nothing.
Unplug the charge cord, pull the battery. Wait. Plug in the battery, hit the power button. Nothing.
Pull the battery and plug the charger cord back into the laptop. Hit the power button. Nothing!
Not even a shore-power light. ARRRRGGGGH!!!!!
Maybe a fuse finally croaked.
I spend just about 4 hours tearing the laptop apart including the hour search for how to do it. Psycho convoluted. I finally get it down to the just the mutherboard to pry out as everything else is out, both drives, DVD, keyboard, etc etc. I go out to my computing chair to get my glasses and as I walk by the 200W cord-wart on the living room floor I note the tiny power light isn't on. "Does it go off with no laptop after a while?" I unplug it from the wall and plug it back in and it lights up....
Seriously?
I cart it to the kitchen table where the dissected laptop lays. I plug it into the outlet. Lights up again. Plug the cord into the dissected laptop. Idiot lights all over it come ON and it POSTs!!
I unplug it. Reassemble the laptop. 20 minutes. (No extra screws!!!) Install the battery, plug in the charger. Hit the power button. It boots stating "Shut down due to critically low battery, resuming".
Just my luck a newish outlet in the living room has bad brass in it AND just as I sit down at the laptop it's hibernated due to a dead battery.
B.E. I'm not laughing at you...
Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: Computer woes
Jay Maechtlen
http://www.laserpubs.com/techcomm
RE: Computer woes
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Computer woes
RE: Computer woes
Good luck,
Latexman
To a ChE, the glass is always full - 1/2 air and 1/2 water.
RE: Computer woes
Many years ago I was chasing whistles in an old sawmill. We had an ungrounded delta system with ground detector lights.
A ground detector light went out in area three. An electrician was dispatched to find and repair the ground.
Two and a half days later he stormed into the shop and threw his tool pouch across the workbench. The super asked;
"Did you find the problem?"
"Yes D*** it."
"What was wrong?"
"The f--ing light bulb was burned out."
Everyone's first thought was:
"I'm glad it wasn't me!"
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Computer woes
The lesson I learned from this was, SUPPORT DOES NOT ALWAYS KNOW BEST. several friends have told me that Microsoft does this as a way of weeding out bootleg programs. My programs are not bootleg , but they have been migrated over a couple of different computers. Finding the license keys for this stuff has cost me more time searching through old documents stored on DVD read write discs than I want to tell , I still feel like a chicken somebody hit with the water stream from a hose pipe.
Ok I will get slowly off the soap box and chalk this up to experience, and remember I did this by myself without any dead sockets.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Computer woes
Keith - there are days when I think God must hate you...
RE: Computer woes
The newer laptop is Windows 10 and I have been disappointed in that it actually seems to run slower and takes longer to boot-up. It does not crash often. This morning I came into to see the same screen that was on last night was still there but the computer was completely unresponsive. I had to reboot it and got a message that Windows did not install properly, did I want to do advanced troubleshooting or try to restart? I did a restart and now things appear to be fine. I may need some blood pressure medication though. I think I need to do a back-up real soon.
RE: Computer woes
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers Entire Forum list http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm
RE: Computer woes
Even my scanner comes up with a different interface which does not have half the flexibility of the interface on the older machines.
But Micros sloth did have a few good versions. How about the version that replaced Vista?
Starting with Win 3.1, I have always found it easy and intuitive to move to newer versions of Windows, until Windoze 10.
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Computer woes
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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
RE: Computer woes
Ditto.. I've had a security system computer running Win2000 Pro for the last 15 years or so, in an application that can't be replicated with with hardware that's available today. The Win 2K software installation was stripped of everything not needed in the configuration and has been extremely reliable.
It's a supplemental security system to another more mainstream security solution, not absolutely required, but does some neat tricks too good to give up.
The power supply failed recently and the new supply with only one string of Molex connectors (all the rest are SATA style) forced me to temporarily put the drives, etc on the same string as an (irreplaceable) internal video multiplexer). The video multiplexer is driven by the software application via an additional parallel printer port card, in which the application must have direct control of the parallel port, something which has become nearly impossible beyond W2K and XP OS versions.
The Osprey Viewcast video capture card (becoming essentially irreplaceable with one of the same quality) would no longer reliably attain video sync. Thinking that the capture card was failing I tried some currently available on the market and simply could not get there with the ideosyncratic defaults built into the cards that were unacceptable for a remotely unattended machine. The newer cards also rendered a much higher noise level in the video.
After changing the very noise sensitive video multiplexer to it's own power feed and a dosing of ferrite beads (fans and hard drives can put a lot of impulse noise back into the power distribution) the video sync issue with the original Osprey capture card no longer existed.
In discussion with my local computer supplier, this is not a isolated problem. The universities and hospitials in our region have a lot of expensive medical instrumentation still operated by vintage computers and operating systems, with no easy solution to migrate to newer systems.
I have a spare motherboard, know of a source to get another Osprey capture card and keeping my fingers crossed I can keep this thing running.
RE: Computer woes
RE: Computer woes
We have a mix of Win10 and Win7 machines here, all the Win10 units boot up faster than the Win7 ones.
EDMS Australia
RE: Computer woes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Computer woes
Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: Computer woes
RE: Computer woes
I got my drafting programs back up and running and a couple of other programs , I am now fighting a slow boot problem and in the middle of that, I lost all of my bookmarks on Microsoft Edge, so this entry is being done on Internet Explorer, which strangely enough is working better than it has done in a while .
They say to err is human and to really foul up you need a computer . I think I have had enough of that to last the rest of my life.
I will continue to nibble away at the rest of this and will not post again on this topic. Thank you all for letting me blow off steam.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Computer woes
Regarding the latest Intel processor speculative execution and indirect branch prediction security hole, apparently the Core 2 Quad (a member of the first generation Core(TM) processors, and my oldest Win 7 primary machine for internet browsing, email, etc) apparently does not have the security issue per the list below. I do have three other Win 7 machines that are i5 or i7 processors and are affected..
If this Intel list of affected processors is in fact correct, https://security-center.intel.com/advisory.aspx?in... the security issue starts with the 2nd generation Core and later series processors.
Intel advises stop installing Meltdown/Spectre patches....
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/22/16919426/intel-...
https://newsroom.intel.com/news/root-cause-of-rebo...
All of this shows the risks involved with forced updates in that they can turn out really bad. Users who have a defined back up/maintenance cycle can better decide the most appropriate time to undertake and have fallback plans when an update goes bad.
I refuse to give up that critical control of my computers.
RE: Computer woes
Of course, there is the base machine but it runs a Linux based OS that boots by copying the OS image from a flash drive into memory so rebooting it fixes anything OS related that might get messed up. I can run Docker containers on this OS too. I changed it from an AMD system to a Intel system and the hardest part was setting the BIOS to boot from a flash drive. Then it was as simple as booting and starting the VMs and Docker images again.
RE: Computer woes
Then I stopped bothering and just used the Linux host (which I'd configured as a desktop rather than a server host anyway) and stopped worrying about licencing and all that fun. Admittedly there's no specific software I'd use at home that would need Windoze anyway. Work is a different story, but I don't have to worry about rebuilding my own machine.
EDMS Australia
RE: Computer woes
The Linux OS I use is server based and not capable of running a desktop, not would I want to do so on my server.