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Item the first: We have already got blooming trees around here -- plum/cherry, persimmon, and this thing, which is commonly planted as an ornamental, but the name of which I don't know:
My first thought is "overachieving plants" but my second thought is "winter? hello? what happened?"
Item the second: I saw a license plate today which said simply XUL. I suppose they could have meant something else by this, but to me that just says "Geeky McGeekGeek".
Item the third: Speaking of geeks, computer diagnosis input requested.
Lately my computer has started exhibiting the strange symptom of sometimes stopping in the middle of booting Windows (XP Pro). When I say "stop", I mean really grind to a halt, and stop sending video output (the monitor goes back to "no signal"), with the HD LED at steady on, and pressing reset (which if I were to do so right now would do just that) having no effect. You have to unplug the power cable and plug it back in to try again.
Last year it did this once that I could think of after installing XP in April (? I think), and then it did it again while I was in Canada and trying to get my mother to pull a file off it so she could email it to me. Since returning in January, it's started to do this little dance quite frequently, as in about 75% of the time I first turn on the computer. (It never does it on the second or subsequent power cycles in a day.)
I have only written down two instances since I started logging this event, but they agree with my memory, which is that it does not always happen at the same point in the boot sequence. The two I have logged are after the graphic of Windows XP appears and it has flashed the keyboard LEDs, but before switching to the plain blue screen with mouse pointer that precedes individual logon; and once just after the character-display progress bar, before displaying the logo.
I don't think it's corruption of the Windows install because of 1) not stopping in the same place each time, 2) the fact that I have to hard-unplug the computer to reset it, 3) Windows itself doesn't seem to be logging these events anywhere I can find (even though when I restart it has an "apology" screen noting that Windows didn't start last time, and do I want to boot in Safe Mode and all that), although I would be willing to listen to ideas about how Windows corruption could cause this. My thoughts turn towards hardware, but I am not sure how to tell whether it is a problem with the hard drive specifically, and/or the motherboard, and/or possibly even the power supply (the one in here is the one that came with the case um... 5 years of heavy use ago? heavy use as in I wore out the original fan, and this replacement fan is starting to make its own noises).
The entire contents of the hard drive are backed up onto its twin D: (altho I wish it was an image, so that if C: crashed I could just swap the cables and merrily continue with Windows none the wiser), so should something catastrophic happen I will fairly easily be able to recover, but it still confuses and kind of worries me.
(Maybe this is payback for all those times I complained that my energetics don't seem to mess with electronics? :p )
My first thought is "overachieving plants" but my second thought is "winter? hello? what happened?"
Item the second: I saw a license plate today which said simply XUL. I suppose they could have meant something else by this, but to me that just says "Geeky McGeekGeek".
Item the third: Speaking of geeks, computer diagnosis input requested.
Lately my computer has started exhibiting the strange symptom of sometimes stopping in the middle of booting Windows (XP Pro). When I say "stop", I mean really grind to a halt, and stop sending video output (the monitor goes back to "no signal"), with the HD LED at steady on, and pressing reset (which if I were to do so right now would do just that) having no effect. You have to unplug the power cable and plug it back in to try again.
Last year it did this once that I could think of after installing XP in April (? I think), and then it did it again while I was in Canada and trying to get my mother to pull a file off it so she could email it to me. Since returning in January, it's started to do this little dance quite frequently, as in about 75% of the time I first turn on the computer. (It never does it on the second or subsequent power cycles in a day.)
I have only written down two instances since I started logging this event, but they agree with my memory, which is that it does not always happen at the same point in the boot sequence. The two I have logged are after the graphic of Windows XP appears and it has flashed the keyboard LEDs, but before switching to the plain blue screen with mouse pointer that precedes individual logon; and once just after the character-display progress bar, before displaying the logo.
I don't think it's corruption of the Windows install because of 1) not stopping in the same place each time, 2) the fact that I have to hard-unplug the computer to reset it, 3) Windows itself doesn't seem to be logging these events anywhere I can find (even though when I restart it has an "apology" screen noting that Windows didn't start last time, and do I want to boot in Safe Mode and all that), although I would be willing to listen to ideas about how Windows corruption could cause this. My thoughts turn towards hardware, but I am not sure how to tell whether it is a problem with the hard drive specifically, and/or the motherboard, and/or possibly even the power supply (the one in here is the one that came with the case um... 5 years of heavy use ago? heavy use as in I wore out the original fan, and this replacement fan is starting to make its own noises).
The entire contents of the hard drive are backed up onto its twin D: (altho I wish it was an image, so that if C: crashed I could just swap the cables and merrily continue with Windows none the wiser), so should something catastrophic happen I will fairly easily be able to recover, but it still confuses and kind of worries me.
(Maybe this is payback for all those times I complained that my energetics don't seem to mess with electronics? :p )
no subject
Date: Jan. 24th, 2005 06:42 am (UTC)From:In some other locale, I'd allow as how it could that there are two really seriously geeky Ghostbusters fans in the same state, and the first one already took "ZUUL", so the second one went for "XUL". But I'd think it was really stretching.
In the Bay Area, I'm not even willing to entertain any other theories. That car's owner really digs XML User Interface Language. Hell, that person may have written the spec or a major parser for XUL; the Mozilla Foundation is apparently headquartered in Mountain View.
I'm really sorry, but I haven't the faintest clue what's up with your computer. I'm willing to agree that it's probably hardware-related, but beyond that... these are weird symptoms,
That part feels like a clue, of some sort... maybe it's a temperature-based thing? Anyway, I'd look into the power supply and motherboard as my first guesses on where the problem is. But I also wouldn't put too much store by my own advice in this case.
Sorry I can't give you anything better than that.
no subject
Date: Jan. 24th, 2005 07:10 am (UTC)From:(I've never encountered any temperature thing that was caused by being cold, rather than by being hot...)