Fixing Windows Boxes that Crash After Blackouts? 110
UnseenTomorrow asks: "Everytime there's a power outage in my house, my Gateway computer crashes. It's only 2.5 yrs old. After the crash the computer just will not allow Windows to boot (yes, this includes "Safe Mode" and every other boot option in that menu). Should I explicitly say that I'm tired of rebuilding or restoring the image everytime? Does anyone have any idea of what could be the problem. I've other computers running fine after the power outage with the same OS but different hardware manufacturer. Any clues or suggestions would be greatly appreciated."
Think ahead (Score:5, Informative)
I don't use a huge UPS (actually I have two). I've noticed that if we get a power outage that's more than a flicker (i.e. lasting longer than 2 minutes, while circuits reset), that it'll likely be out for 45 minutes or more. So I don't worry about keeping my systems going for longer than 5 minutes (which is the 2 minutes plus 3 to shut them down -- which will change when I finally have time to set them up to communicate with the UPS).
Re:Think ahead (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Think ahead (Score:3, Interesting)
Ask Toddbu (Score:1)
Re:Ask Toddbu (Score:2)
I had this same concern. My UPS is oversized, and I didn't experience any heat problems. But if you're running at or near (or over :-) the rated capacity then you should be concerned about heat. While I can't recommend how to modify the case, I can tell you that it's a well known principal in physics that air travels better through holes than through the side of steel or plastic cases. :-)
Re:Ask Toddbu (Score:1)
Re:Think ahead (Score:1)
Pretty much all of the ones that come with a 7AH battery are not rated for 100% power output for more than 3 or 4 minutes.
In other words, it'll likely melt because they lied, it can only do maybe 200-300 VA continuous for more than a couple minutes.
Re:Think ahead (Score:2)
Re:Think ahead (Score:1)
If it did cost $90 I guess I just haven't kept up with the progress in UPSs.
Re:Think ahead (Score:1)
I admit I haven't actually been on the pricing part of any UPS purchase less than 5000 VA in several years. I've just been telling the other IT guys what to order in terms of VA and they have been ordering it for me.
It's cool to know they are so cheap now (and they don't lie on specs anymore), I'll have to get some for home use.
Re:Think ahead (Score:1)
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Re:Think ahead (Score:2)
Are you talking about the crime part, or the pay part? ;-)
I heard this joke on Hee Haw.
Re:Think ahead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Think ahead (Score:3, Informative)
No, you don't want car OR marine batteries (car batteries are worse, but both are inappropriate.)
In these batteries, the plates are more like lead sponges designed for high current output for short periods of time. What you want are industrial type batteries that are designed for many recharge cycles and long-term use - fork-lift batteries, or golf cart batteries are generally good choices. They have thick lead plates that hold up. Since they are no
Re:Think ahead (Score:1, Informative)
Your UPS probably isn't delivering enough charge current to support a car size battery, so the car battery will degrade much faster than it should. Lead-acid batteries that are charged too slow, and that aren't given enough current in their brief "over-charge" state at the end of a charge will sulfate and fail rapidly.
You might get a lot of use per power failure cycle out of a car battery used
Re:Think ahead (Score:3, Informative)
Car batteries (or tractor or marine or anything along those lines) do not belong indoors, and are probably a good way to void your homeowner's or renter's insurance, assuming that you're still alive to care.
Re:Think ahead (Score:1)
Me, I managed to snarf two 2200VA rated UPS units from a client's office which closed down last year. Each unit has batteries internally, and has two external battery packs rated at 24V 75A each. That's a whole lotta backup power at home.
Re:Think ahead (Score:2)
Re:Think ahead (Score:1, Informative)
and, biggest of them all:
battery.
these things don't last forever and they're a liability. a friend of mine had their UPS explode and catch fire due to a bad battery at a local ISP. Batteries don't last forever either. they have to be replaced. Oh, and they're heav
Size constraints? (Score:2)
Re:Size constraints? (Score:2)
Re:Size constraints? (Score:1)
Re:Size constraints? (Score:2)
Re:Think ahead (Score:1)
Flexibility. If you're located in an area served by a large UPS already, having one internally would cause issues. We've had our facilities maintenance folks complain to us because our small UPSs were fighting w/ the large UPS installed for powering the data center. I left electronics back in college so all I can relay is that
Re:Think ahead (Score:2)
This isn't to sa
Re:Think ahead (Score:1)
UPS (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:UPS (Score:2)
Cliff, (the editor for this story) would be overrun with questions. And I would pity him.
I love converting users to *nix for whatever reason. But I do it responsibily. I offer tech support to anyone that converts.
That being said, I've probably watched other people operate a *nix system for about 20 minutes of my life. What little I know is based on reading the best documentation I co
Um . . . (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, they're not free or cheap, but figure if you make $30-$40/hr and if you spend eight hours rebuilding a bunch of boxes, you might as well have just spent a few hundred on a nice power supply...
Re: (Score:2)
"Hate" to admit... (Score:1)
As much as I throughly dispise working with Windows' GUI, etc., I have seen, so far, one instance of a problem with a hard shutdown on NTFS. Other than that seems to hold its own as a journaling file system.
This is coming from doing lots and lots of hard reboots on Windows 2k* servers in a web hosting environment.
That does not mean other programs or hardware, i.e. SCSI RAID w/big caches on both the drives and the RAID card itself, might have a problem with such actions.
I can actually say that Mi
Re:"Hate" to admit... (Score:2)
Re:"Hate" to admit... (Score:2)
Just my $.02
Re:"Hate" to admit... (Score:2)
Re:"Hate" to admit... (Score:1)
i ended up screwing up and instead disabled sharing in the firewall
and reverted my changes by doing this in cygwin's bash shell
$ cd
$ chmod -Rv 777 *
OS (Score:2, Insightful)
...Or you could just go with Linux.
Re:OS (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:OS (Score:2)
I like your sig, though.
Re:OS (Score:1)
Re:OS (Score:2)
Excellent! See, these are exactly the kind of out-of-the-box solutions people come to
Re:OS (Score:1)
How many Linux distros ship with ext3 data=journal (the only ext3 journalling mode that will really prevent corruption in the event of a crash) enabled out-of-the box, anyway? I've always had to enable it manually (tune2fs -o +journal_data /dev/hdx and reboot).
Re:OS (Score:1)
Ext3's ordered mode guarantees that file data gets written to the disk before the corresponding metadata gets committed to the journal. [sourceforge.net]
What's running? (Score:4, Informative)
On a different topic, years ago I had a problem where Windows 98 would hose itself if you shut it down. It'd actually wipe out the FAT table. Why? The HD was new with a bigger cache than most discs had at the time. Windows would shut the power off to the drive before the disc was done writing data from the cache. I don't have high hopes that this has anything to do with your computer, but if I had nothing else to try in your situation, I'd see if the problem happens with a different HD.
Re:What's running? (Score:2)
Re:What's running? (Score:1)
Re:What's running? (Score:2)
Re:What's running? (Score:2)
BartPE is your friend: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ [nu2.nu]
Download the basic BartPE CD builder and have it make you a standard BartPE ISO. Burn it to disk and then boot off the CD.
Once it's done loading, launch a command window and run:
chkdsk
(checkdisk "repair" C:-drive)
Or whatever drive needs fixing. Once it's done, reboot. This should repair your filesystem and probably get you going again.
Treadmill (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Treadmill (Score:2)
You've got that all wrong.
You hook a mini-generator up to that little wheel your hamsters like to run around in.
But, then again, your way works if your the typical geek that needs to lose weight, but a stationary cycle works a little better. (Actually, I tried an exhibit at the local science museum, and when I'm in shape, I can pedal hard enough to light at least 4 60 watt bulbs, which would power a smaller system (240 watts).
Re:Treadmill (Score:2)
Unless you're a serious athlete, I doubt you could put out 240 watts for long -- that's a lot of work. Even Lance Armstrong can only sustain around 500 watts [tdfblog.com], and he's probably as good as it gets.
Though to be fair, a small computer generally uses a good deal less than 240 watts. Even though you may have a 450 watt power supply, that's just a peak rating -- the average should be closer to 200 watts for most computers (t
Buy a UPS (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, have you looked into purchasing a UPS? They are pretty cheap now (less than $100). You would have enough time to shut down your machine safely if there was a power outage.
Re:Buy a UPS (Score:2)
Just stop! Please! First, it's a Gateway. Second, it's a Gateway. And anyway, the only real answer here is the second part of your suggestion, buy an UPS.
Re:Buy a UPS (Score:1)
BIOS backup battery? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BIOS backup battery? (Score:1)
Re:BIOS backup battery? (Score:3)
If your google searches in this realm have been fruitless thus far, here's a suggestion: try searching for CMOS battery.
Re:I can't believe this was posted (Score:4, Funny)
We'll use your statement - "I can't believe this was posted" - to illustrate both an open mind and a closed mind. Now, I understand that your statement was rhetorical, but suppose that it wasn't. Suppose that you really did NOT believe that this was posted, and you had to find out the truth. You could easily determine the truth, by looking at the story.
1) An open mind would thus SEE the story, and then accept the conclusion that this piece of drivel was actually posted.
2) A closed mind would SEE the story, and continue to deny that the story actually exists, and maintain a belief that this absurd story about a POS Gateway was not ever posted. This is a comfortable belief, because a universe in which this story was never posted would be a better one. But, the truth is not always comfortable!
There's another category of mind - the *credulous* mind, which some people mistake for an open mind. The credulous mind is sort of HYPER-open, so that any crap idea can get right into a person's head because their brain has fallen out.
3) A credulous mind would have never heard of Slashdot, but if Art Bell mentioned that a lamer posted a story about a crashing POS Gateway on Slashdot, they would believe it in an instant, without question, without ever checking Slashdot to see if there ever was such a story posted.
OK, I hope that little lesson made you all better people. I know that it certainly warmed my cockles to relate it to you.
Re:I can't believe this was posted (Score:1)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
I had the same thought. Five minutes on even a newbie forum should have resulted in the general UPS answers that are dominant at the moment.
Product of a few minutes on google. [anetforums.com]
It is one thing to ask /.'ers to do tech support for truly difficult problems. But this one should have been managable by the people at any friendly computer repair center.
You know, digg might be on to something with the ability to mod stories up or down.
Re:I can't believe this was posted (Score:1)
Re:Install UPS or.... (Score:1)
Re:Install UPS or.... (Score:2)
If I have a system that is, in some way horked, I'm not going to fix it by restoring it from an image that has proven to already have problems.
Personally, I think if he can prove it's not a BIOS or mobo problem, he should wipe and install from scratch.
That is if he insists on dealing with outages over and over without buying a UPS.
I think I know what it is (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, there's your problem right there! Buy yourself a new computer and quit bothering us.
Re:I think I know what it is (Score:1)
Well, there's your problem right there! Buy yourself a new computer and quit bothering us.
Heh. I used to own a Gateway way back when. For some reason, I kept having issues with DSP errors and the modem. Every time I would get one of these mysterious errors, I'd have to reload the system and replace the modem. Thank all of this was covered under warranty. I eventually took the possessed computer to a Gateway store several miles from my hous
Re:I think I know what it is (Score:2)
>> Well, there's your problem right there! Buy yourself a new computer and quit bothering us.
Better yet, learn to build your own computer and install the OS from scratch. No vendor out there ever installs Windows without tons of crap trialware that ultimately ends up bogging down your machine. ('cept maybe Alienware...)
Write Caching Problem? (Score:2)
I've seen many problems in the past with write caching-enabled hard drives that become heavily corrupted when an unexpected power outage occurs, which we usually attributed to cached data being lost before it could be written to the hard drive. Granted newer hard drives and operating systems are more
Um, Linux? (Score:2)
Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cliff, if this is the best you could find for an Ask Slashdot, it's time to decommission the category.
The only answer this deserves is this [catb.org]. Why don't you read it too, Cliff?
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
The other part of the reason is that many people will come in here and suggest things about crashing computers that probably have no relevance to the asker but will be relevant for hundreds of readers of the site. Ask Slashdot is like Dear Abby or something: Abby's not going to answer a question about a specific instance with a specific answer, but she will say something general like marriage counseling because that's usually a good starting p
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
On the scale of possible results of 1 to 10, this questioned resulted in a 1 or 2. Pointing out that that is better than zero isn't a very compelling response, when, unless the queue is entirely empty, any number of at least 5s or 6s were available for equal effor
Fine Print (Score:1)
I do so dislike crashes that cause kernel corruption.
It's called "maximizing shareholder value". (Score:2)
If you are using Windows XP, just re-load the operating system over the old system, and that will very likely fix everything. Boot from the Windows XP CD. Important: Skip the first "Repair" chance. The second is what you want.
Another phrase for the business strategy of an unreliable mainstream operating system is "maximizing shareholder value". Many people who begin to have trouble simply buy another computer, and Microsoft makes more money, si
Re:It's called "maximizing shareholder value". (Score:2)
Your likely problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, what it takes to fix it is get rid of the problem (GoBack) This will require, when you boot up, hit the space bar and turn GoBack off. Leave it off. Then, do what all the other nice people on
To the editors: ARE YOU SERIOUS?? What, today is 'any old story will do' day?
Re:Your likely problem... (Score:3)
Re:Your likely problem... (Score:3)
It really doesn't count as a story since it boils down to " some version of Windows won't start up in some vague way on a Gateway of unknown model number after a power outage ".
News for Nerds indeed.
Re:Your likely problem... (Score:2)
What i would suggest however, is that one of the drivers is screwing the system over, hence why it works after a reinstall and doesn`t exhibit this problem on other hardware (therefore with different drivers)
BIOS reset (Score:1)
Not normal behaviour (Score:1)
I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally shut the power down to one of my PC's, or had a power failure. Never had a single problem such as Windows not booting. With NTFS, there's not even an annoyi
OK, Let's Have A Go At This (Score:3)
2) Check your hard disk(s) and make sure that they are spinning up OK by the time the BIOS finishes.
3) Check for services starting which address programs or hardware which may have been removed.
4) Swap the power supply.
5) Wipe the hard disk and (if you must use MS Windows) reinstall from scratch. I've seen machines from big manufacturers that had all sorts of weird problems which went away with a default install.
The above checks cost nothing but your time, but then there's option #6.
6) Buy a UPS.
CHKDSK (Score:3, Informative)
9 out of 10 times, chkdsk will be able to restore FS consistency. If not, do a "repair" operation to put down fresh OS files. Unplug the net until you enable the firewall, though.
Re:CHKDSK (Score:2, Informative)
Check out http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
-Gerard
Try Acronis True Image Backup (Score:2)
Acronis' True Image Backup product has saved my butt on several occasions, and has been reliable and rock solid. You'll never lose more than a day's worth of data which is more than enough for a home user.
RESET THE CMOS (Score:1)
HELP ME TOO! (Score:3, Funny)
WTF is slashdot posting this for? What kind of news is this? This has to be the stupidest "story" I've ever seen on the front page of slashdot. Please for the love of geekdom, put in a story moderation system.
Though I will say, judging by some stories that make the front page of Digg, it won't help a whole lot. Maybe you could make it +/- mods...not just + mods. I think that would actually make it better than Digg. Right now you either "Digg" a story or you don't. If enough people digg it then it makes the front page. You should be allowed to give negative mod points to the story as well. Please give us Negative Mod points for "news" stories on Slashdot. This "ask slashdot" should have never made front page.
At least give the subscribed users story mod points or something. If we are this desperate for "stories", I'll come up with a nice question like "I installed Linux now I can't find windows, what do I do?".
important Information (Score:1, Informative)
There are several versions of windows, which one are you using?
What actually happens when you try to reboot? Is there an error message? A blank screen?
Which model gateway are you using?
Here are a few things to try.
Try googling that model with 'reboot' and any other useful info about the problem.
Could it be the cmos battery? Swap with another pc and see if that works.
Could the power supply be on it's last legs? Swap in one from another pc
While I am no
Quick solution (Score:1)
But in reality, there is little you can do to prevent Windows, or ANY other OS out there from becoming corrupted after a power outage, this isn't an XP only situation. If your hard drive was in the process of writing data, especially if it was transfering cached data from virtual memory, then there
My 0x02 cents: Is it write caching? (Score:2)
Oh, and like eleventy-billion other people said: Get a UPS.
--Joe
If its not a software problem... (Score:2, Informative)
Easiest answer: UPS.
Otherwise, a fresh, clean install of Windows; swap power supplies; swap hard drives; swap motherboard, etc.
Re:If its not a software problem... (Score:2)
Shouldn't the voltage regulators on the motherboard offer protection from circumstances like this?
Re:If its not a software problem... (Score:2)
That isn't their job. They convert power from the power supply to local power sources that meet whatever special needs (CPU power, etc.) the motherboard has.
The main power supply is supposed to shutdown all outputs if any output is out of spec. Some chips will destroy themselves if one of their supply voltages is missing.
I lost a hard drive that way (Score:2)
Just spend the hundred bucks for a UPS. Save yourself the headache.
Another Ask Slashdot (Score:1, Redundant)
"My printer won't print and gives an error of 'PC-Load Letter'. Can someone tell me please how to get my printer working?"
News for Nerds indeed. Someone please email me at relevancy@regained.com when this site no longer is worse than C-Net forums.
PS this question would have been marginally interesting if the OS in question was Linux. But as it is, please go ask your 13 year old kid how to keep windows running.
Stupid driver... (Score:2)
It is likely that your system fails to boot up because a stupid driver is tryting to read a log file or data file that it keeps freeking open all the time when running
BAD DRIVER! BAD! BAD! NO COOKIE FOR YOU!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hunt this driver down, and without mercy destroy it!
One path you might take to begin this task is to install plain vanilla windows without any drivers - don't even think about using the windows disk that came from Gateway!. Now unplug the
Hooray! (Score:2)
The submission infers that MS Windows is at fault for this individuals negative experience.
Let's be a little more objective.
The environment: Individual has a computer running an OS. The computer is 2.5 years old. The user has placed the computer into an environment where the unfiltered power is unpredictable due to environmental causes, and cuts out often and without warning.
The problem: When the power is cut to the box, the OS (Windows