Recent Posts

2276

N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007 / Re: Cody Mug for NANY Participants

« Last post by nudone on January 27, 2007, 02:02 AM »

hehe, nice to see you farmy.

i must say i love your office - seriously.

i hope you aren't going to go into the counterfeit business producing cody mugs!

2277

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of FirstDefense-ISR (Raxco Software)

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 12:30 PM »

i think i might give it a try then in a day or two.

2278

Mobysaurus / Re: Dinosaur strikes back! New Mobysaurus site launched on DonationCoder

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 12:08 PM »

yes, good idea that it is recognised as part of the DC family and i like the idea of the dinosaur being on a leash - with the white figures removed ?

i don't think the dinosaur needs to be smaller than cody - it might be more fun for it to be a lot larger.

2279

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of FirstDefense-ISR (Raxco Software)

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 12:05 PM »

does the swapping between snap shots take only the same length of time it would to boot (reboot) the machine as normal? i'm assuming the it wouldn't take any longer but i'm interested to know for sure. thanks.

2280

Mobysaurus / Re: Dinosaur strikes back! New Mobysaurus site launched on DonationCoder

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 11:58 AM »

if you wanted the suggestions done that mouser makes above then i can edit the top banner accordingly. as for thanking me for creating the theme - thanks, but i didn't do it. i just created the images with cody on them, mouser has put everything else together.

back to the banner - i think a green instead of blue background would work well - especially if the dinosaur is put over on the globe.

2281

Find And Run Robot / Re: Humanized Enzo

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 06:25 AM »

i've just installed it had a quick go and then quickly uninstalled it.

i didn't like the idea of using the caps lock key before i downloaded the program and using it only confirmed this.

looks pretty but it's trying to be too clever and so i label it a failure. that because of how i use the keyboard no doubt.

only thing i can see to learn from enso is the ability to set options by typing on screen, i.e. to learn commands. i wouldn't really expect this to be implemented into farr - i don't think it's that useful. maybe it would be extremely useful for temporary quick things you wanted to set/remember.

2282

Find And Run Robot / Re: Humanized Enzo

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 06:06 AM »

very interesting.

2283

General Software Discussion / Re: WIndows Vista Ultimate ... worth upgrading ... CNET say no!

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 05:56 AM »

Er ... wasn't WinXP the ultimate OS that prevented the whole system crashing ?

-Carol Haynes (January 26, 2007, 05:47 AM)

very true. looks like i've already started to believe the hype.

2284

General Software Discussion / Re: WIndows Vista Ultimate ... worth upgrading ... CNET say no!

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 05:43 AM »

just the usual hype isn't it.

i've read that networking is a nightmare from an expert that tried, but the way vista works so that it doesn't crash the whole system when a game crashes sounded good - only useful if you play games that crash or lock the screen up, of course.

2285

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 05:38 AM »

hmm, it could be a virus i suppose - in the boot sector. i'll investigate later. thanks.

2286

General Software Discussion / Re: WIndows Vista Ultimate ... worth upgrading ... CNET say no!

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 04:50 AM »

i wanted to upgrade to get that nice black user interface but now i'm using the 'royal - noir' scheme by miscrosoft on my xp system - so i've absolutely no reason to use vista now. yep, that's it, i can't see any other reason to use vista at the moment.

i hope vista goes the way of millennium - the only people who use it are those that get lumbered with it when buying a new machine. like xp followed millennium, i hope that the NEXT ms operating system after vista will be actually worth buying/using.

2287

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 04:43 AM »

very wise words, Carol, but there is a slight problem (sorry to labour the point)...

i made two acronis true image backups of the operating system that was sufferring the problems. one backup was made just after xp had been installed the other backup was made after i had installed most of the software i use. these backups were not used/restored until i encountered the problems that i've described.

restoring these backups had absolutely no effect in removing the problems i was having with the troublesome software. not even restoring the backup that was made directly after installing xp, i.e. a perfectly clean operating system, could not work correctly when i tried installing the problem software onto it. the machine is behaving like like it has a homeopathic like memory.

to make it clear what happened:

i installed xp.

i made a backup.

i installed programs - these programs worked perfectly.

i made another backup (complete new backup, so there are now two backup images).

the machine worked perfectly for several days.

i turned the machine on one morning and i suddenly started getting consistent problems with software that had been working perfectly the previous day. nothing had been 'changed' on the machine the day before to cause these problems.

i booted into the other operating system on another partition (on the same drive) and found that the set of troublesome software on the other operating system worked perfectly within this operating system, i.e. no obvious hardware problems to blame.

i then restored the acronis backups that i had made, believing these would be a simple solution to the problem. one backup would allow me to install the programs again from fresh and so they would work perfectly again, and the other backup actually contained the programs in question - BUT the backup was made BEFORE the programs started going haywire so they would obviously work perfectly again when restored.

BUT THEY DIDN'T.

the backups made not one slightest bit of difference to the problem. without there being a hardware problem this looks impossible to me. BUT there is no hardware problem as the other operating system on the machine works perfectly with everything (forget about the dodgy drive problem i was having - it's been working perfectly for days and it isn't the drive were the operating systems are installed).

so, what i'm getting at is this...

my acronis backups were of absolutely no use to me.

i shall definitely backup my data in future but i'm very suspicious now of what a drive image can do. it still makes little sense to me what happened and i won't be surprised if everyone thinks i'm leaving details out or exaggerating - i'm not (unless i sufferred a blackout).

2288

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 03:08 AM »

thanks again, but the reason i brought this problem to everyone's attention is that it was so inexplicable (and remains so). the machine appears to be working perfectly - all recent hardware scans have been fine and the machine often runs for several days without me bothering to reboot.

the software problems i encountered were relatively trivial in that they wouldn't have stopped me from doing my 'work' on the machine. the problems i described indicated that something was not right somewhere and yet being able to dual boot into another xp on the machine proved again that there was nothing wrong hardware wise.

to me it looks like the evidence points to these culprits: the acronis images weren't perfect, the partition the 2nd operating system was on wasn't perfect, the machine is sufferring from Dissociative identity disorder.

i think (near) daily backups of my data is a habit i need to take up. i'd consider using linux if i felt adventurous but it's such a paradigm shift that i'm not ready for it yet (ever?). i've certainly not fixed the problem - merely chosen to pretend it never happened.

2289

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of FirstDefense-ISR (Raxco Software)

« Last post by nudone on January 26, 2007, 02:50 AM »

it sounds like a nice bit of software but i'm curious as to how it works underneath, i.e. can it work with a single partition drive - creating the backup(s) onto the partition the operating system is on.

i like the idea of being able to boot into different operating system environments with different programs installed in each environment. if it really works perfectly then i'd be temped to use it rather than installing another version of xp and then dual booting between the operating systems.

hmmm.

2290

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 25, 2007, 05:15 PM »

i've given up trying to figure out what's wrong and have simply reverted back to the older xp install, i.e. i've not installed xp again.

i've been using the maching all day long, as i normally would, without a single problem. which is exactly what i expected.

when i next feel like sticking needles in my eye, i'll pause and then instead i'll install xp onto THAT partition again and see what happens. i don't think it's going to prove anything whatever the outcome.

all i can really do is write the problem down in the book of mysterious pc phenomenon - maybe there is some weird fluctuation going on at the quantum level that is the result of nearby unicorn being a bit sad. i don't know and until someone at the fortean times investigates i'm going to forget about it.

thanks to everyone for making your suggestions, i appreciated it.

2291

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 25, 2007, 02:47 AM »

just to confirm, memtest+ ran for 9 hours and did 13 passess with no errors then i turned it off.

i shall now install xp again.

2292

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 05:12 PM »

all 5 'partitions' have now been scanned using chkdsk /f /r. no problems reported at all. i'm now going to leave the memtest running again but i know that will be okay too.

tomorrow i shall jump out of bed like a spring lamb, install xp anew and find that everything is working perfectly. it has to.

2293

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 02:08 PM »

(still running chkdsk)

whilst i'm running chkdsk from the command prompt it first asks if the volume can be dismounted first as the drive is in use - to which i reply 'yes'.

so is this scanning everything or not?

2294

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 01:20 PM »

right, i'm now going to run chkdsk /f /r which, as i undertand it, will try to fix the problems it finds and will also scan for bad sectors.

i'll run this on all 5 partitions - that's 3 partitions on the raid 0 drive and then on each of the individual samsung drives.

memtest reported no errors but i shall run it again later.

2295

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 12:06 PM »

thanks again to for all your comments.

memtest is currently running on the machine - no errors so far (1 pass done).

both operating systems are installed on the raptor drives which are in raid 0. all scans on these drives have always performed perfectly.

current scans on the bad(?) samsung drive report no faults. no SMART problems either. i still haven't run the manufacturers diagnostic util on the drive but it looks like i will have to - though i don't believe this can be the problem causing the programs i mentioned to behave strangely.

kmplayer i can forget about - it's not 100% stable anyway. but for poser and winamp to have display problems means there is obviously something seriously amiss. maybe it's a graphic card problem - and yet it isn't, again, because the card clearly works perfectly in the older xp system.

Maudib (our messiah from dune it seems), for you to mention your samsung problem does make we wonder about these samsung drives. i've replaced a samsung drive already that was only 6 months old and the problem drive i have now is also of the same model number. it obviously isn't fair to judge samsung by a few complaints - you never hear about the number of people that have no need to complain about their samsung drives afterall - but it still makes me wonder.

maybe it is a power issue, but the psu is a 600w seasonic, which are regarded as quality units (i bought top performance hardware throughout the machine). temperatures monitored in the computer have never shown anything alarming for graphics or cpu or hard drive (except the samsung one that was replaced).

i shall leave memtest running and then tomorrow i shall reinstall xp with the guilty programs tested immediately afterwards.

i can't risk abandoning the older 'working' xp install as there are a few things good about it. the encoding times i got in virtualdub were at least twice as fast in the older xp than in the new xp install. codec issues, no doubt, but i don't know which ( this is when converting mpeg to xvid). all well and good then you may say, why don't i just use the older xp install. i would but this older o/s would often cause the screen to lock up when using the tv card or watching videos - this didn't happen with the new xp install. so, you see, i've always had problems with the machine - that's why i've been so dissappointed by this fresh install - it worked perfectly and then inexplicably suddenly stopped.

i might be better off getting an exorcist in to sort it out.

2296

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 09:49 AM »

fortunately, the problem drive is not in the raid 0 setup - it's one of the samsung drives used for just storing files. the drive has had all data removed from it, formatted twice, using different formatting programs, most data restored and then several chkdsk scans run on it - some of which worked perfectly some caused the machine to reboot. currently the drive seems to be fine, i.e. it has not caused any reboots for about a week.

thanks for recommending memtest+ (again), Carol. i'll leave the machine running tonight to see what happens with the RAM.

good cartoons, sri, very appropriate.

2297

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 08:34 AM »

thanks, Farmsteader, for your comments. and i did snicker about the capital letters reference - but as you see i've not learnt how to use the shift key yet.

your advice would be something i'd consider following, but as the acronis backups i'm using must be restoring the registry back to its previous state (the state at which the backup was made) and there were no problems encountered on the machine after those system STATES for a few days, then i cannot blame the registry.

this is the perplexing thing. the software/data part of the machine has been restored back to a time when things worked. i've made fresh downloads of winamp and kmplayer and installed them onto what should now be a perfectly working restored machine - i know it's perfect because the machine worked perfectly in the days after i'd made the backup, quod erat demonstrandum (i think).

so, system/data is perfect. that leaves hardware as the fault. but hardware isn't at fault because it works okay with other operating system.

this is the root of my mental collapse. the problem is there but there is no cause. i question whether it is me or the machine that might be sufferring from Munchausen Syndrome.

2298

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 08:05 AM »

that's a good idea about the system error logs, Carol, i always forget to look at them. now the problem is i'm looking at them i can't see anything that looks that bad, i.e. i've just run winamp and kmplayer and after their errors i can't see any information in the logs about them.

here are the errors i get. i guess it looks like ram problems(?) the poser 6 problem i can't show as it's to do with rotating the model in none fast preview - it simply won't rotate smoothly as if i didn't have a 3d card.



i think i'm going to just go back to the old xp and use that. this new install has just proven to be one massive failed experiment that has proven to me not to trust the computer - and more importantly not to waste any time on it trying to make it work better than merely adequate.

thanks for all your suggestions. i will ignore the problem until it arrises in the older xp system and then i'll have no choice but to start removing hard drives and things.

here is the drive layout to clarify things:

both operating systems are on the raid 0 disk 0. the dodgy drive(?) is drive 1 (work)

2299

Living Room / Re: is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 06:46 AM »

ah yes, i remember you mentioning your outbursts that resulted from bad computers. strangely, i no longer feel that angry about the machine - i really haven't felt rage about such things for a couple of years or more. reflecting on this i wonder if i have gone beyond that rage stage - i've reached the point of acquiescence. i've lost the battle. all i can do is gather myself and start again (oh, how melodramatic i make it sound).

sri, you would be right about the acronis backups but neither of them contain the programs that are causing the problems. at the time of the backups were made the system was working perfectly and so i went onto installing the problem software afterwards - the problem software was working 100% perfectly well until yesterday. to reiterate, one of the backups only contains xp directly after install, i.e. no other software installed (except acronis).

i suppose the acronis backups might just not have made very good backups anyway and so i have simply restored something that doesn't work properly.

mouser, the backups have only been restored this morning - i've only used them today so i've not really messed them about in anyway.

as for the RAM, well i sort of think maybe that is the problem - but the problematic software works perfectly well in the other older xp install. so, either there is nothing wrong with the ram or it's being used differently between the operating systems - is that likely? i've no idea.

it looks like i have no choice but to try installing xp once again. and maybe taking the hard drive out. i would be eager to do this but as things looked like they were working quite well for several days i fear i might not discover any problems again until two weeks have passed - in other words, i'll believe everything is okay only to be disappointed again.

i shall ponder on my next step.

2300

Living Room / is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

« Last post by nudone on January 24, 2007, 06:17 AM »

i will understand if this post is seen as dragging this situation out for as long as i possible can but i really am losing my will to turn this machine on...

i'll try and explain as briefly as i can. this machine is just over 12 months old. i paid out top money to buy all the best bits of hardware at the time (just over £3000 - i priced the same components up yesterday - they are currently worth £2000 retail). i can't say it ever worked perfectly from day one but i put that down to me rushing the install of the operating system and then banging loads of programs onto it. it worked well enough, just not 100% perfect.

i recently started having hard drive problems (they might be resolved now, i just have to wait for the next random reboot to occur). this prompted me to install win xp onto another partition of one of the hard drives - i'm glad to say i can keep installing xp without much trouble as i have a legal corporate key.

this new xp install was to be my masterpiece operating system. since its first boot up, i've been keeping a log of every install i make, every setting i change, every issue that occurs and how i fixed it. it was all going so well.

yesterday, the new xp install decided to start playing up - winamp creates errors when trying to run the visualizations and kmplayer complains when i click on a specific set of preferences. poser 6 also wouldn't work as it should. all these things worked perfectly well the day before.

no problem you might think. i've been keeping a log of what i've done to the machine, i can simply revert back by uninstalling and reinstalling, etc.

well, i've tried everything: reinstalling, deleting, using xp's system restore which didn't work at all, and the final kick in the teeth which has nearly pushed me over the edge of sanity - i used acronis true image to restore the entire partition.

acronis worked perfectly well. i successfully restored two different backups of the operating system (one version being a minimal backup of the operating system and another containing a few programs i'd installed). you'd think this would be the answer to my frustration and winamp, kmplayer, poser 6 would now work perfectly after their fresh installs. WRONG. they do exactly what they did before i wiped everything clean. HOW ON EARTH IS THIS POSSIBLE?

you might reply that i must have a hardware fault. maybe it looks that way, but don't forget, i have the old xp installed on another partition. if i boot into this older operating system and use the programs in question, they work absolutely perfectly - so where's the hardware problem now.

i can, of course, just revert back to the older xp install and forget about the newer one. i will, what else can i do. but that doesn't explain what is happening on the machine. it really is driving me insane - i've nearly spent two weeks messing about with this machine since it started playing up - that's whole days nearly, not a couple of hours here and there.

i'm considering asking a friend to drop the machine out of an upstairs window so that it lands on my head as i lie on the ground below. the computer would then finally know that i am beat and would hopefully leave me alone after that.

and now the moral of this tale:
don't spend a lot of money on computers believing that they are going to be the perfect godlike machine. stay in the midrange price bracket and get good value for your money. don't assume your computer actually likes you, mine is a total prima donna that likes nothing more than to see me banging my head up and down on the table in despair. the terms sadist and masochist start to seem quite fitting for my pc interplay.