Re: [CGUYS] drupal for only 10 million
You should actually listen to what we're talking about. Oh wait I forgot who I am talking to. On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 7:28 PM, TPiwowar t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Aug 20, 2009, at 1:50 PM, mike wrote: It wasn't just the degree that set Dvorak off, it was also Kundra's behavior during an appearance at I believe was in front of some senators. His basic point being the guy was full of BS web 2.0 doubletalk that makes no sense when actually analyzed. Web 2.0 is hardly doubletalk. Perhaps it is just a future that some geezers have trouble comprehending? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Try running Spinrite on the hard drive. It may be that one of the disk sectors being read during boot time is slow. I did that on an older machine recently, and the improvement in performance was amazing. Fred Holmes At 12:56 PM 8/20/2009, Chris Dunford wrote: I've got an older Dell that hasn't been used much for a year or so, but now I need it. It works fine, but after I hit the power button it takes a couple of minutes before it starts the boot process. It just sits there, its little power light flashing rapidly, for about two minutes, then it starts the boot. Once it starts, everything's fine. So it's annoying, but not a big deal. Diagnosis? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Chris--What model is it? The flashy light is likely a trouble code. -Original Message- I've got an older Dell that hasn't been used much for a year or so, but now I need it. It works fine, but after I hit the power button it takes a couple of minutes before it starts the boot process. It just sits there, its little power light flashing rapidly, for about two minutes, then it starts the boot. Once it starts, everything's fine. So it's annoying, but not a big deal. Diagnosis? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Chris--What model is it? The flashy light is likely a trouble code. Yeah, it's not that kind of flashy light. It's the power on light in the center of the power button. It starts out flashing on and off slowly, then ramps up so that it's flashing faster and faster until it finally boots. There's no sequence that you could interpret as a code. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Any chance that flashing pattern is a code that the boot drive has exceeded S.M.A.R.T. tolerances? I have my POST screens turned on and I got a S.M.A.R.T warning about my hard drive, which is why I ran Spinrite. I first read the details of the S.M.A.R.T. warning, which were too many read errors, and figured that Spinrite might fix that, which it did. My box has a noisy fan at times, sometimes very loud. I suspect it creates enough vibration that it actually makes writes on the drive wobbly. So, now, I just stick in a floppy when the fan is noisy, and wait for the fan to quiet down before I boot from the hard drive. Spinrite is available from http://www.grc.com/intro.htm . Has saved my bacon on many occasions. Fred Holmes At 09:07 AM 8/21/2009, Chris Dunford wrote: Yeah, it's not that kind of flashy light. It's the power on light in the center of the power button. It starts out flashing on and off slowly, then ramps up so that it's flashing faster and faster until it finally boots. There's no sequence that you could interpret as a code. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Yeah, it's not that kind of flashy light. It's the power on light in the center of the power button. It starts out flashing on and off slowly, then ramps up so that it's flashing faster and faster until it finally boots. There's no sequence that you could interpret as a code. Interesting. I'd 2nd the hard drive scenario and also posit that it could be a faulty power supply that has a component that isn't fully completing a circuit until it warms up. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Is it possible you have an antivirus program or another program running before windows loads? Do you have another LED that indicates drive activity? Chris Dunford wrote: Chris--What model is it? The flashy light is likely a trouble code. Yeah, it's not that kind of flashy light. It's the power on light in the center of the power button. It starts out flashing on and off slowly, then ramps up so that it's flashing faster and faster until it finally boots. There's no sequence that you could interpret as a code. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
Thanks for the pointer. I had never even noticed that option in Control Panel. However, poking around there I am unable to find any way of disabling these massive files. Nor any particular explanation of why the files would be so huge. Plain text error reports can't possibly stretch into gigabyte size, can they? The few that are listed there seem to contain less text than this email. And aren't those covered under the 'dump' files under SystemAdvanceddebugging info? On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Chris Dunford seed...@gmail.com wrote: Running Disk Cleanup in Vista I was surprised when it cleaned a whopping 4gb of system queued windows error reporting last month. But now, a month later, it's reporting a whopping 7gb of them! I try to keep my C partition small, so these are a good 10% of the drive! I have system dumps turned off - I've done that since Win98 days. I have Write an event to the system log enabled. So how can I just turn this off? Or should I? What's the deal with these things, which presumably will be around in Win7 also? The settings are in Control Panel-Problem Reports and Solutions. You can delete them individually via View problem history or all at once with Clear solution and problem history. In View problem history you can also ask Windows to check for a solution for any of the issues that are listed. The deal with these things is that they can be really useful. When a program crashes, Windows gathers information about the problem and sends it to an MS server (if you click Send, that is). The crashes are logged and compared to a database of known issues. Sometimes an issue has been resolved and the app vendor either has an update or a workaround, and you'll be notified right away. If there's no solution, the event information is shared with the vendor (if they participate in the program) so it can be investigated. The company I work with joined the WER program a year or so ago and immediately started getting reports of bugs we never knew about. Using the information we got from WER, we were able to resolve most of them, so now people who encounter those same bugs are notified of the availability and location of a fix, which they can download immediately. Most of the files you have are probably there, by the way, because you clicked Don't Send when Windows notified you of the crash and asked if you wanted to send crash data to MS. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Is it possible you have an antivirus program or another program running before windows loads? Do you have another LED that indicates drive activity? No, all this happens before the computer starts. The hard drive doesn't even spin up until after this weirdness is finished, and the HD activity light is quiet. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] LISTSERV
TPiwowar wrote: On Aug 20, 2009, at 9:04 AM, Jordan wrote: I think Google is doing the a good job of making its Groups, on-line apps, and other tools accessible and easy to use, but as the article suggests, control and security are difficult and complicated. Is that fair? The article says In other words, the security settings are there, they just have to be used. It is common for applications to have such security settings turned off by default because having them on by default would cause too many tech support calls. Point taken. But it must be difficult to create these apps, with so much access, and make them secure. And foolish for the managers of groups and file systems to not browse through all the settings to make them safe. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
However, poking around there I am unable to find any way of disabling these massive files. You're right, I thought there was a disable option, but I don't see one. There should be (even though I'd recommend against using it). Nor any particular explanation of why the files would be so huge. Plain text error reports can't possibly stretch into gigabyte size, can they? The few that are listed there seem to contain less text than this email. The big dump files contain copies of the contents of large hunks of memory. The developers of the failing program can load them up in their debuggers and see exactly what's going on, i.e, what the program was doing when it crashed, the contents of variables, etc. That's what makes it possible to isolate and fix the error. Earlier this week I got a crash dump from an error we'd never seen before (and the program I work on has many millions of users). I was able to understand and fix the problem in under 10 minutes, and as of the next release in a few weeks, anyone who experiences the same issue will immediately get a notification that it's been fixed and how to get an update. And aren't those covered under the 'dump' files under SystemAdvanceddebugging info? I don't believe so. I think those are the blue screen dumps. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
I can't help but think something is wrong with your machine. I just ran disk cleanup on my win 7 install from 6 months ago...I had less then half a gig of data cleaned from running disk clean up. Never ran DCU before. On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Tony B ton...@gmail.com wrote: Running Disk Cleanup in Vista I was surprised when it cleaned a whopping 4gb of system queued windows error reporting last month. But now, a month later, it's reporting a whopping 7gb of them! I try to keep my C partition small, so these are a good 10% of the drive! I have system dumps turned off - I've done that since Win98 days. I have Write an event to the system log enabled. So how can I just turn this off? Or should I? What's the deal with these things, which presumably will be around in Win7 also? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
I can't help but think something is wrong with your machine. I just ran disk cleanup on my win 7 install from 6 months ago...I had less then half a gig of data cleaned from running disk clean up. Never ran DCU before. If he has a program or programs that crash with any regularity, those crash dumps can build up pretty quickly. Admittedly, 4GB sounds like a lot. But it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
Fred Holmes wrote: Any chance that flashing pattern is a code that the boot drive has exceeded S.M.A.R.T. tolerances? I have my POST screens turned on and I got a S.M.A.R.T warning about my hard drive, which is why I ran Spinrite. I first read the details of the S.M.A.R.T. warning, which were too many read errors, and figured that Spinrite might fix that, which it did. My box has a noisy fan at times, sometimes very loud. I suspect it creates enough vibration that it actually makes writes on the drive wobbly. So, now, I just stick in a floppy when the fan is noisy, and wait for the fan to quiet down before I boot from the hard drive. Spinrite is available from http://www.grc.com/intro.htm . Has saved my bacon on many occasions. Fred Holmes At 09:07 AM 8/21/2009, Chris Dunford wrote: Yeah, it's not that kind of flashy light. It's the power on light in the center of the power button. It starts out flashing on and off slowly, then ramps up so that it's flashing faster and faster until it finally boots. There's no sequence that you could interpret as a code. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * Changing that fan would be a cheap, easy fix! John Settle -- Sous le ciel tout étoilé John Settle Personal Webpage: Urban Astro Images http://home.comcast.net/%7Ejjs-cts/ * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
[CGUYS] macbreak weekly announcement
To those few who may care, Merlin Mann is back on macbreak weekly. The show lost some of it's play when he left last summer, and even though Bourne isn't around doing his Ed Mcmahon impersonation it's still fun. Between Inhatko and Mann, it's quite a fun show. For those who might not know, macbreak is a weekly podcast on the twit network about all things mac. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
At 05:28 PM 8/21/2009, John Settle wrote: Changing that fan would be a cheap, easy fix! Lubricating it is even easier, but it requires extracting the box from its place in the configuration, and opening it up. A non-trivial exercise. It never occurred to me that the noisy fan would cause bad writes. I thought hard drives could withstand a bit of vibration. Now I know better. Live and learn. Fred Holmes * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Slow Dell startup
I have a Dell desktop, now a fair number of years old. It also seems to take a long time to boot up. Could this be a Dell-specific issue? Randall On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Fred Holmes f...@his.com wrote: At 05:28 PM 8/21/2009, John Settle wrote: Changing that fan would be a cheap, easy fix! Lubricating it is even easier, but it requires extracting the box from its place in the configuration, and opening it up. A non-trivial exercise. It never occurred to me that the noisy fan would cause bad writes. I thought hard drives could withstand a bit of vibration. Now I know better. Live and learn. Fred Holmes * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
4 gigs was just the first cleanup, probably from a year's Vista install. The second 7gig was from just a month later. I _had_ changed the mobo, but I don't recall too many crashes after that; Vista handled the new mobo fairly gracefully (compared to Win9x anyway!). The only app I can recall crashing with any regularity is UltraMon (a multiple monitor utility). That crashes on shutdown, which may be why all this is getting stuck in a queue. But when is this queue supposed to upload and clear itself? No question there's something wrong here. I'm just wondering what it is. Especially if it's going to hold over into Win7 in October. Could be some very obscure setting that's preventing the uploads. On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 4:27 PM, Chris Dunford seed...@gmail.com wrote: I can't help but think something is wrong with your machine. I just ran disk cleanup on my win 7 install from 6 months ago...I had less then half a gig of data cleaned from running disk clean up. Never ran DCU before. If he has a program or programs that crash with any regularity, those crash dumps can build up pretty quickly. Admittedly, 4GB sounds like a lot. But it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
No question there's something wrong here. I'm just wondering what it is. Especially if it's going to hold over into Win7 in October. Could be some very obscure setting that's preventing the uploads. Well, I was thinking about this, and I think I might have misstated the case when I said that you have these files because you didn't click Send. I believe that they stay around anyway--at least, they do if there is no solution offered. This is what allows you to go into the list of problems and resubmit inquiries for things that previously had no solutions. What are the applications that show the most problems in the list? Are there a few apps with long lists? UltraMon maybe? If there are a gazillion UltraMon crashes, that sounds like your answer. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
Oh, it's a kind of mix of apps. A game here, a graphics app there. Most show as 'report sent'. If I click to view the details of those that weren't sent, there's a little text, way less than in this email. Of course, this may be because I've already done the cleaning. I see an option to include additional details, and it says that may include parts of files. But there doesn't seem to be any way to regulate that it shouldn't keep a file 10% of the drive size queued up forever! On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 10:34 PM, Chris Dunford seed...@gmail.com wrote: No question there's something wrong here. I'm just wondering what it is. Especially if it's going to hold over into Win7 in October. Could be some very obscure setting that's preventing the uploads. Well, I was thinking about this, and I think I might have misstated the case when I said that you have these files because you didn't click Send. I believe that they stay around anyway--at least, they do if there is no solution offered. This is what allows you to go into the list of problems and resubmit inquiries for things that previously had no solutions. What are the applications that show the most problems in the list? Are there a few apps with long lists? UltraMon maybe? If there are a gazillion UltraMon crashes, that sounds like your answer. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Windows error reports question
Oh, it's a kind of mix of apps. A game here, a graphics app there. Most show as 'report sent'. If I click to view the details of those that weren't sent, there's a little text, way less than in this email. Of course, this may be because I've already done the cleaning. What was taking all the space are the files that were probably listed at the end of some of the Details reports, under Files that help describe the problem. Specifically, it was the ones with the .hdmp and .mdmp extensions. If you've already done the cleaning, I'd suggest deleting all the reports. They're not doing any good without the dump files anyway. Then just keep an eye on it. Maybe you'll see a pattern. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
