timothy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tlord) wrote,@ 2005-12-21 20:05:00 |
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Main computer, not doing so hot ...
My Sempron desktop, the machine I use most frequently for just-about-everything (because it is the fastest machine I own, tied for most memory, has a 19" monitor connected, good keyboard, etc) is getting increasingly wonky.
After an upgrade* to the OS (Debian) a week ago, which left the system unusable, and a tedious and nerve-wracking effort to rescue my data (upshot: I think at least 95% effective rescue, which is far better than nothing), I am again running Debian 3.1 on the same system, but odd things keep happening. My volume control disappears, and running sound apps gets me an error like (I'm paraphrasing) "no mixer or volume control elements were found."
In fact, the first sign of wonkiness, I think about two weeks ago, is that sound stopped working, and I hadn't done anything to bother it. I know, you hear that all the time, but I'm pretty sure it's true: when I went to bed, listening to a series of radio dramas as a frequently do, it was working. When I woke up, it had stopped working. And I am not a sonambulistic computer user.
Today, I find that my external disks are showing up only ... sometimes. Earlier today, my external USB drives wouldn't show up (that is, they were not automounted, and manual mounting failed also), while a half-gig memory stick showed up fine.
Since my data rescue has already happened, and the drives each have a copy of my "grand unified data collection," this is in itself not so very worrisome; a reboot later, they were again properly and automatically mounted, with little icons on the desktop. Now the USB drive doesn't appear. Arrgh. (Oh, and Ubuntu Live CD again refuses to boot; it used to boot this machine fine.) So ... what exactly could all this mean? Dying motherboard? Dying disk? Three dying disks all at once? Bad RAM? Whatever it is, I'm glad it happened after I turned in my final papers, lame as they were anyhow. 72 hours earlier, and this would have been a lot worse.
But it's annoying, nonetheless.
For all that, it's easier and faster to completely reinstall Debian than it is to completely reinstall Windows, and when one's system is hosed to the point that it won't boot, complete reinstall is one of the few obvious options.
My Sempron desktop, the machine I use most frequently for just-about-everything (because it is the fastest machine I own, tied for most memory, has a 19" monitor connected, good keyboard, etc) is getting increasingly wonky.
After an upgrade* to the OS (Debian) a week ago, which left the system unusable, and a tedious and nerve-wracking effort to rescue my data (upshot: I think at least 95% effective rescue, which is far better than nothing), I am again running Debian 3.1 on the same system, but odd things keep happening. My volume control disappears, and running sound apps gets me an error like (I'm paraphrasing) "no mixer or volume control elements were found."
In fact, the first sign of wonkiness, I think about two weeks ago, is that sound stopped working, and I hadn't done anything to bother it. I know, you hear that all the time, but I'm pretty sure it's true: when I went to bed, listening to a series of radio dramas as a frequently do, it was working. When I woke up, it had stopped working. And I am not a sonambulistic computer user.
Today, I find that my external disks are showing up only ... sometimes. Earlier today, my external USB drives wouldn't show up (that is, they were not automounted, and manual mounting failed also), while a half-gig memory stick showed up fine.
Since my data rescue has already happened, and the drives each have a copy of my "grand unified data collection," this is in itself not so very worrisome; a reboot later, they were again properly and automatically mounted, with little icons on the desktop. Now the USB drive doesn't appear. Arrgh. (Oh, and Ubuntu Live CD again refuses to boot; it used to boot this machine fine.) So ... what exactly could all this mean? Dying motherboard? Dying disk? Three dying disks all at once? Bad RAM? Whatever it is, I'm glad it happened after I turned in my final papers, lame as they were anyhow. 72 hours earlier, and this would have been a lot worse.
But it's annoying, nonetheless.
For all that, it's easier and faster to completely reinstall Debian than it is to completely reinstall Windows, and when one's system is hosed to the point that it won't boot, complete reinstall is one of the few obvious options.
