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Computercaust
01-09-2013, 05:15 PM
I wonder if it's something I'm doing.
About 6 months ago, my Dell died when its harddisk let go. Being 4 and a bit years old, I bought a new one and stuffed it under the bed.
About 6 weeks ago, a laptop in work died. It was a decade old, so it passed without concern. I was sitting beside it at the time.
Just befor xmas, my personal laptop, not six months old, decided to shit its fan, and then have the HDD fail. It went back to manufacturer.
I borrowed a computer. 3 hours ago, while sitting at my desk at work, it went pop. Just shut down and died completely. No power anywhere.
Currently posting on the old Dell. Which just about manages to work with a HDD stolen from the broken borrowed machine.....
Joy.
Is it something I'm doing. Seriously? Because I commuted on a bus/train with this thing for over three years and it's still pretty solid. Aside from the HDD. Then left it running for a month or more at a time without shutting down. It never complained. Until I started commuting to work by car.
Now I've killed many computers.
What the hell is going on?
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Only possible causes I can think of would be a statistically improbable run of bad luck, something really funky happening with your bioelectric field, a really well-thought-out and malicious prank, or that you've started carrying around a hefty pile of magnets.
Any other gadgets going belly-up in your presence, or is it just computers?
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Well... a set of headphone died. Usual cable failure.
Otherwise it's just been the computers. And been bloody annoying too. Because I used both for work and have work stuff on them. One of the lost about 3 months worth of stuff.... most was backed up. Not all. Another lost nothing, but I can't actually boot to the windows partition because it'll blargle. Linux boots quite happily because, well it's a fresh install. I have my stuff.... but am still trying to figure out how to make it work.
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Static "cling" and Nearby or carried radios
01-09-2013, 10:33 PM
Just some wild guesses to think about or check.
This is just a wild stab and extremely unlikely, but did you get a new phone or some other wifi or bluetooth aware device in the last year or so?
Is there some electronic devices that you carry everywhere regularly?
Go stand by some audio equipment that has a long microphone cord with a turn up microphone and see if you notice some odd sounds that fade when you walk away from the cord.(hopefully it's constant.)
I doubt your a HAM or hobby radio operator, but if you are did install a radio in your car or start carrying around a radio?
This is supposed to be cured or much improved in modern(post 1990's) computers, but in the past static electricity could cause instabilities in a computer even when all you touch is the outer metal grounded case.(The large electrical current flowing into ground could cause bit errors in circuits or in data being written to the hard drive, since most windows computers used hard drive memory caches it could on very rare occasions corrupt programs and cause hard drive problems.)
Also in the past few years I"ve noticed USB ports sometimes suddenly failing when some device was plugged into them. Most of the time when I checked the conditions were right for static electricity when the USB device was plugged or pulled.
Do all the failed computers have a location in common? Such as your car or office or house?
The kicker is that the static shocks can create cumulative damage that won't show for some time and the Device your plugging in may itself never be damaged.
Did you have a habit of plugging in something into the ports of all these computers?
Something as simple as new shoes, car seats or even clothing(got a favorite pair of pants) have you notice yourself being shocked by static charge more than normal in the past few months.
How did the hard drives fail? Just corrupted files or head crash and/or surface defects?
Hope this gives you some ideas
Howard melton
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Honestly, aside from myself and the location, there's nothing they had in common. Not even failure modes.
The Dell was dropped. Lumbered on for a few weeks before finally headcrashing.
The MSI was sitting on the desk when it made horrible noises then died. It got RMA'd as it was still young.
The Acer I borrowed after the MSI died just clicked off. Went completely inert. HDD is fine. I have it in the old Dell now with a quick Linux install.. Dells are tough.
All have spent time in the same backpack, and on the same workdesk, and same carseat on the way to work. Cloth carseats. But I haven't felt a static shock in months.
Only electronic device I have been carrying with me is a phone. Can't hear anything over the speakers except the usual noise mobile phones make when they handshake.
Then again my home speaker set has an odd shielding quick where they used to occasionally pick up what sounded like a number's station... if they were left on at certain times of the night. They haven't done that in a while though. (And that's no joke.)
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Power is my only other suggestion
01-10-2013, 12:20 AM
The equipment failing is so varied and the failure mode is so varied, that it might just be coincidence, but still it is odd.
My only other suggestion is your power. I've seen noisy, or poor
quality power kill power supplies and cause other odd failures on
desktop computers.
I've assumed all your computers have been plugged in through surge protectors and that your office has uninterrupttible power supplies which usually warn when their are problems with the power.
If you are using an old surge suppressor with no warning indicator for when the protection MOV has failed stop using it. MOV's in surge suppressors eventually burn out and stop protecting your equipment and must be replaced.
You might want to borrow some sort of power tester and check all the in common power sockets where these machines have been plugged in. It can be hard to find power problems especially if it's because some machine is powering up or shutting down at random time.
Number stations, yep I've heard them, both on my radios and through audio equipment usually like you at night.
Ask around at the office and your neighbors at home have they had a string of older electronics failing?
A few months ago I did come across an tech journal report about the empire state building randomly preventing late model vehicles from starting/running until they were towed several blocks away.
Nothing about laptops or desktop computers being damaged.
here's another article on it
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/empire- ... e-1.343366
Any new radio stations started broadcasting near your home, work or route in between?
hmelton
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My office isn't so grandiose to have UPS and surge protection. It's not even an office, but a prefab inside a warehouse. It's a three-person company, with a couple of directors and an accountant on top of that.
Besides, these are all laptops. The power bricks themselves are fine. Nothing else in home or office has suffered.
Is it possible it's my driving?
A lot of my route has ramps on it. Some are pretty vicious (Saw a Civic loose its sump on one).
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A possible solution..you have developed a bio electric EMP field.
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Or you've suddenly started emitting Minovsky particles.
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Are the computers on/active while you are driving?
Modern hard drives (anything made withing the last 5 years at least) will park the heads off of the platters when not active. So they can take some large shocks without issue as long as you aren't trying to read/write something at the time.
And the fact that the hard drive in the acer is fine would point to the driving conditions not being a problem.
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Or you got a gremlin infestation.
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Unless your commute is obscenely bumpy, and, as sweno commented, the computers are one, it's not likely to be the culprit.
Sounds like a run of bad luck. MonkeyFist used to burn through a power supply a month. Didn't matter what computer he was working on at the time, if he used it for a month, it fried. Fortunately, that's not happening any more.
About three months ago one of my Western Dig HDs just stopped working. A month before that, the other hard drive I had in that computer died as well. No indication that anything was wrong. Never a hiccup or even a twitch on the drive. Then, one reboot--klunk, never started up again. It even kept my computer from booting until I pulled it. I've only had the opportunity to replace one drive, so far.
These things just happen. It sucks, but, it just does.
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Surge suppressors
01-11-2013, 08:56 AM
I agree with the other replies unless your roads are so bumpy that any speed over 20 mph your head is in danger of hitting the roof then a turned off computer riding in your passenger seat isn't going to take any damage.
One thing I'd suggest strongly is that you put surge suppressors on all your computers and carry a small surge suppressor for the laptops power supply. Surges can cause cumulative damage and I've seen power supplies that appear to be working fine with the power bricks light burning green and yet it has failed. I've seen damaged power supplies that depending on the internal design are putting out a voltage well above or below the devices rated safe range. You can even get power supplies that have failed and are putting out pulses or AC instead of a nominal constant DC.
I doubt this has anything to do with your problems, but I can't emphasize enough the need for surge suppressors on all electronics plugged into the mains. I live at the end of a power line and we use surge suppressors on literally everything At a rough guess I figure on average most of our electronics last at least half again as long as our neighbor's electronics.
I can't think how many times someone has brought me a computer and said"The lights brightened for a moment and the computer made a popping sound and shut down." In every case they hadn't bothered to use a surge suppressor.
A surge suppressor isn't going to stop a direct hit from a lightning strike, but it will help a lot for all those other "bright moments" even those that don't instantly kill a unprotected computer. Surges can add up on the electronics especially the power supply electronics and lead to an early failure.
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I'll pick up one when I can...
In the meantime, I heard back from the repair shop for one of them. They found strands of thin metal fibre had been drawn in through some of the vents in the computer, and shorted a few components out. And I think I know where the fibre came from. Probably not gremlins.... probably a brillo pad used on my desk in work, in a pre-christmas spring clean.
The other one appears to have just dropped off the top of the bathtub of failure.
My commute is.... well there're what you'd call speed bumps along most of it. It's actually doing a number on the car's suspension too, and I'm not whacking these hard. I've seen some of 'em take the sumps out of cars.
Meanwhile, the Dell I'm on right now is running like a champ. I may have to media-serverise this thing. It has great audio output (As opposed to having a broken speaker). And an 8600Gt is still enough for High definition video.
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hmelton Wrote:I doubt this has anything to do with your problems, but I can't emphasize enough the need for surge suppressors on all electronics plugged into the mains. I live at the end of a power line and we use surge suppressors on literally everything At a rough guess I figure on average most of our electronics last at least half again as long as our neighbor's electronics. Might I suggest that you also get a surge suppressor wired into your main current? Nowadays you can buy breaker panels with surge suppressors built-in.
While I wouldn't rely on just a switch-panel suppressor, they do extend the life of your dedicated suppressors...
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Good God, why in the hell would they install speed bumps that can take out the oil pans!? If they ever did that here in San Antonio (they are pretty speed bump happy in the rural neighborhoods) the citizens would rise up and torch city hall - your car is just that important in a place where your job can easily be a 30-mile commute. (Interstate-10/Highway-90, cutting clear across SA from one side of Loop-1604 to the other? Nearly 27 miles. San Antonio is the only major metropolitan city I know of to have farms larger than a handful of acres within the city limits.)
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Because, it's a residential street and the residents got sick of it being used as a rat-run, because it connected the main artery in and out of the city, and generally leads to useful places despite not being intended to. Everything uses it.
Mostly because the main road intended for the purpose blocks up.
Urban planning. What planning. It dates back to the fifties when nobody conceived of it ever being a problem.... because nobody would ever afford that many cars.
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blackaeronaut Wrote:... San Antonio is the only major metropolitan city I know of to have farms larger than a handful of acres within the city limits.) We've got some in Ottawa, as well - two big ones downtown, to boot.
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A cheap UPS/Battery backup costs like 60$ USD, and more than pays for itself in the way it saves headaches and extends the life of devices.
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Well. My setup is a 6-socket power strip daisy-chained from another six-socket power strip. Yeah.... only one socket in the room and all this junk. Apparently, both have surge protection on them. Just don't tell any fire inspectors.....
In other news, my laptop came back from being repaired last Friday. Then went ahead and put on about 10,000 load/unload cycles on the HDD a day for the last 4-5 days or so. No really. It seems someone at Western Digital had set the idle timer to 3 seconds instead of 300.... so it was constantly parking and unparking its head. Tick-toc....
Fixed that myself with a WD firmware tool running from.... of all things..... DOS.
All is well.
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Aha! sounds like someone dropped some zeros while programming the firmware.
And as to speedbumps like that, they are popping up everywhere. there are more than a few here in Los Angeles in certain residential areas; often, as noted, on Residential streets that do tend to get used to bypass congested main arteries.
On the plus side, apparently around here they have to not only have a bump sign, but some lines painted on the street leading up to them (as the ones here are asphault and can blend into the street) so if you hit them at speed, its your own damn fault.
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