Quote from SamH :

Early prognosis: heat caused by dust. Quicker than a few hours of memtesting

From what Kolkrabe wrote, I bet against overheating.
The screen going black just means his computer had a Stop error for whatever reason. The PC rebooting hints at having automatic restart enabled. So this is - really - the first and foremost thing to do.

Okay, it doesn't work it seems

For the event viewer choose start, run, type eventvwr.msc. Look at system and application sections. If you find system errors related to the crashes cut and paste here the info, and I'll try to have a look. And what does the BSOD say when you exit GPL? It would help to know that vital information, sometimes looking at those strange numbers (especially the first one) can already point you in the right google direction.

Last edited by Albieg, Sun 15 Jul 2007, 10:31.

It's the nick I use always on the Internet, made by first name (abbreviated) and first letter of surname.

I don't believe Internet is separate from my real life, so I chose that once and I've always been albieg since then. The only exception is/was my blog, where I use another nick. Since I have my own domain my nickname can be easily related to my real identity.

It's a kind of policy for me, a way to take responsibility for what I say or do on the net without hiding behind multiple identities or being anonymous.

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

Any ideas?
DK

The problem is at the moment quite generic, so it has to be addressed with general troubleshooting procedures.
First thing to do, disable automatic restart after a failure. This will probably lead to having a blue screen with some diagnostic info. Take note of that info and start looking into the trouble from there.
In case no info is given, you should start investigating your system for hardware and software faults.
Things to check first: RAM (prime95, memtest86), Hard disks (chkdsk, HDTune, manufacturer's utilities) and ensure all fans are working and clean. Have a look at the Event Viewer too. These are things that can be done quite easily without replacing anything and, they don't require advanced maintenance and repair skills.
You'll find additional information about the things I mentioned searching in this forum.

Now the HD charts look right.

Onboard sound: it could be, but generally setting the DX accel to basic solves it, so all you can do right now is borrow an external sound card, disable the inboard sound via BIOS (or via mobo jumper) and try. Get your hands on a soundcard with a different chipset, if you can. I don't really have hints about it, I'm no expert in low end commercial soundcards and I never tried LFS with onboard sound, which I disabled and which I will always disable (I use an Egosys WaveTerminal 192X on my PC, never had a single problem, but that's a semipro soundcard not exactly suited for gamers or general use. I just ordered a M-Audio Fast Track Pro USB for my laptop).

Inconsistent PSU output: it's another good option. Do you trust your electrical company, by the way? I'm using an APC UPS right now to stabilise the AC current. I need it because I have lots of spikes in AC current and I don't want my PSU to fail because of them. Besides that, I use a Nexus PSU, so it's not exactly the el cheapo PSU that you can't trust.

About the wheel, I couldn't say anything about it.

Have you tried running your rig with a traditional PS2 wired keyboard and mouse? If you got them it would be worth doing it. I may be a traditionalist, but I ruled them out in favour of a high quality wired USB keyboard (Enermax Aurora) and an OEM Logitech basic wired USB mouse. Reducing the number of USB connections to a minimum could be worth a try.

If someone deleted something for whatever obvious reason, why are you still talking about it?

Last edited by Albieg, Thu 12 Jul 2007, 19:35.

Unfortunately System Restore (which however generally works) doesn't tinker with data, since it keeps track and backs up only system changes and not application data, since it's not meant for that. It's helpful for rollbacks, but not always. It isn't always the best method anyway, and sometimes you have to disable it to avoid rolling back to a dangerous situation (such as when malware is present) or just to save hd space. Sometimes it may be the only way to save time when system changes are very deep and rolling them back by hand could be extremely long/impossible.

If the system is a Windows 2003 Server you could have shadow copies enabled, so you might be able to retrieve data back in this case, but this depends on a variety of circumstances.

The data may have simply been accidentally deleted or lost because of a hard disk problem. There are however some things that can be tried: some undelete software or, much better in my opinion, some raw hard disk scanning software such as Disk Commander by Winternals. There are freeware alternatives like those offered by Smart PC Tools, which are less sophisticated (and of course, less expensive )

The probability of success varies depending on various factors. Main ones: extent and kind of damage, amount of activity (written files) after the files have been deleted and the space occupied by them has been marked as free. In short: if the sectors previously occupied by files are not damaged and haven't been overwritten, files should be retrievable through raw data readd that doesn't rely upon file allocation tables, but scans whole partitions or HDs. If files have been overwritten even a professional data rescue service cannot help. By the way, such services are extremely expensive.

Last edited by Albieg, Wed 11 Jul 2007, 18:00.

There are test results charts on HDTune main site.
Performance seems to be a bit low for both HDs. 40 pin cables?
The computer is enough recent to support 80 pin cables. If it's so, I'd replace them and test again. If possible, I'd use a separate cable for each HD, at least during the test, setting both HDs as master on primary and secondary channel, and setting other devices (CDs, DVDs) as slave. Also check that HDs are properly set and wired: the master must be on one connector at the end of the cable, while the slave goes on the connector roughly in the middle of the cable.

Correction: one hard disk should have an 80 pin cable. However I consider a minimum throughput of 1.8 MB sec extremely low.

A good way to have more consistent results is (I guess I'm a monomaniac) testing from a preinstalled environment such as an UBCD 4 Windows, which already contains HDTune but runs from the CD, thus minimising interfering HD access from OS and apps. Sorry for the multiple edits to this post, it's been a hard day at work and I'm a bit confused

Last edited by Albieg, Wed 11 Jul 2007, 18:18.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

what i don't understand is how can you say that Cockpit View ISN'T the most realistic..

I don't understand too, in fact nikimere never said it...
Anyway I agree with nikimere. FCV sucks. CV is much more limiting than real life vision, so I understand those who don't use it. Like me.

Some drops are common, although they may suggest keeping an eye on the hard disk. They can be related to OS or other software activity during the scan, although one drop occurs always in the same place in all three scans, so there may be some kind of trouble there; unfortunately doing a certain diagnosis in this case is really difficult, especially if SMART parameters are okay. I had only a case where the hard disk was deemed perfect by diagnostics and benchmarks but it was, in reality, faulty, just because of a performance drop like that, more severe perhaps (I can't exactly remember) and plenty of hard disks that showed the same drops that had no problems at all. Only a direct comparison with another HD with the same exact content would help making a decision. This isn't hard to do, you only need some imaging software (like, for instance, Acronis Migrate Easy, but there are others) and a new HD, but I realise you need to have some stuff available, and this may not be the case.

I'm afraid I've run out of suggestions. Since I do tech support/administration for business pcs and networks I'm afraid I've run out of suggestions, but hardware buffs may help more.

I'd personally try to strip down the system to a minimum shutting down unneeded software and services, even uninstalling some stuff, especially programs that may interfere with input/output activities (such as indexing software, firewalls and antiviruses), but this doesn't sound like the culprit in this case.

Anyway I'm impressed with the job you did.

Okay, buying a new version would help. About the error: the window itself isn't important, it's more important the additional info you could have by clicking the click here...
Did you try updating via LiveUpdate? The version is old, it may need updates to work with newer OS patches. Also try to look in the Event Viewer and fish for information on the Symantec Support Knowledge Base. Anyway, a search with a specific string didn't return anything related.
I always stress out the well known fact that Symantec Security Products (apart from Backup Exec, which in reality was made by Veritas, acquired by Symantec) are problematic. Sometimes trying to fix a problem with Symantec stuff simply doesn't work, sometimes it leaves you with an almost crippled system. I have a lot of first hand experience about this: Symantec even offers tools and instructions to remove products by hand or without the usual uninstall procedure. Having had lots of troubles in the past (I uninstalled hundreds of Symantec products from hundreds of computers) I am unwilling to help you in doing something that could have the slightest probability to cause a problem. I would do it only if I was physically present, and this isn't possible for obvious reasons. Sorry for that.

Last edited by Albieg, Mon 9 Jul 2007, 20:03.

So your firewall is probably screwed up and you can't connect to the master server... You have a problem with your firewall it seems, not with LFS!
That means: I can try to help, but there's no way I could fix a Symantec product that isn't working.

Read the thread about Ferrari sabotage and then decide who's biased and who's unbiased. You can decide that separating comments from information. Reach your own conclusion, but make it possibly an unbiased one...

Okay... My guess is that it's related to Norton Internet Security.
First try: disable Norton Internet Security. You won't have security problems generally since your router also acts as a firewall (a NAT permits to more computers connection to the Internet through a single IP address, but it also acts as a firewall, technically). Try connecting again after you have disabled Norton Internet Security. Does it work? If it works, enable Norton Internet Security , add a rule about LFS and you're done.
But since Norton Internet Security asks no more there could already be a rule about LFS denying Internet access. Just change it to allow traffic. Otherwise you could:
- Delete the offending rule, if you find it
- Add the rule to allow or
- Launch LFS, set it to windowed mode to be sure you have your desktop visible with Shift+F4, wait for Norton Internet Security popping up and consent access in a definitive way. This means, generally, marking a checkbox that makes the rule definitive, or something like that.
If you give me the Internet Security version (2004, 2005, 2006...) I could see if I'm able to point you to the right resources on the 'net.

Probably your firewall, at the moment, has a rule that prevents LFS from connecting. It could even have noticed a change in the executable since you applied the patch, refusing LFS connections to the Internet.
Did you try to disable the firewall for a while, just to see if LFS and other software connects? Did you check rules on your router? Did you check rules on your firewall (most likely the culprit)?

As a general tech assistance rule, you should give all relevant information about your problem, including a general description of your network setup and the firewall you're using, otherwise people won't be bothered to answer to you since the answer would be extremely generic (like mine) and/or discussed in an enormous amount of different threads in this forum.

I just have a question for your friends: do they behave like this only with you? Do they make an exception, for instance, for girls? Are they willing to forget, from time to time, their beloved principles, especially when they can have a personal advantage by doing so? Are they principled, or just a bunch of poseurs?

I'd go for the second from your description. They seem to know too little about music and society to be so critical. Maybe they'll evolve and avoid to care about the market, and that's the only way to be free to a certain extent. But if they ever become so, they'll also become fully aware that some things, like social aspects of music and everything related, will never be the same for them.

Yesterday's playlist:

Minamo - Beautiful
Aufgehoben - Messidor
Philp Jeck - Vynil Coda IV

I'd give your friends the Messidor cure, after having carefully read all the reviews (especially the one by The Wire). But I doubt they would understand.

Edit: I also doubt they would understand the thousands of lessons that can be taught by a video like this.

Last edited by Albieg, Sun 8 Jul 2007, 09:15.

Quote from J.B. :

XP bug? Virus? WTF? I don't get this thread.

It's just a command to shutdown your PC. And I don't see how attaching a file here that shuts down the PC of anyone who runs it is "harmless". Most real viruses have far less severe effects.

I agree almost completely with you, except for most viruses having far less severe effects. Anyway I would consider such attachments harmful for various reasons, but I would consider it harmful mainly for the person who posted it since it has a malicious intent: it's deceiving, useless and has the intention to cause some damage, at least to the nerves of the user. Oh, and by the way, I don't care if the user is an aspiring pirate or not, and neither cares the law.

Edit: and to tell the whole truth, using this screensaver has been a lot of fun, but without disrupting anyone's activities. I can't remember the exact number of colleagues who told me my computer had a BSOD when I was away from keyboard.

Last edited by Albieg, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 16:59.

Quote from SamH :

Have the flights stopped?

I don't know. But I know that if you don't prosecute and jail anyone for their deeds, the flights will never stop.

Quote from SamH :

Yeah I'm trusting that it's going to come properly to the fore at some point.

I wouldn't bet on this.

I regret to say Italy too is deepily involved in CIA flights, explicitly aiding the torturers.

And then, in Milan, Abu Omar's kidnap.

The judges have steadily repeated their will to prosecute the kidnappers involved, but there has been so far an enormous amount of political resistance. The Italian secret agents involved in the case have been jailed or are in jail.

The enquiry is ongoing. The US decided not to hand to the Italian judges the CIA agents who orchestrated and executed the kidnap. There has been a lot of political pressure to slow down or halt the enquiry, and the bold moves of the judges are resisted for various, obvious reasons from both sides of the political spectrum.

Some reasons may be obvious to me, but that doesn't mean that I consider them good... So we have some hopes in common. Maybe it's just because I developed a deep distrust in mainstream politics, but I wouldn't bet on these hopes.

Quote from XCNuse :

I couldn't believe after watching that video to what extent one has to go to stop it from running, when i saw the task manager come up I thought surely it would stop it... guess it didn't.

Actually you can kill it with Process Explorer, but it would be dangerous or pointless.

Mark Russinovich's blog entry excerpt:

To make things go more quickly uncheck the Confirm Kill entry in the Process Explorer Options menu. Then kill Smss.exe, the Session Manager process. The reason we start with Smss.exe is that Smss.exe watches the back of Winlogon, the process it creates during the boot, so if you terminate Winlogon first Smss.exe gets upset and blue screens the machine with an error indicating that the Windows logon process terminated unexpectedly. And if you kill Lsass or Services without killing Winlogon you'll see this dialog that Winlogon shows before it shuts down the system (you can abort the shutdown by running "shutdown -a").

Quote from Racer X NZ :

Only if your Spanish, if the re-run of the Americas Cup is in Spain again then we may set up a colony.
Seeing as we are the only country that wants the damn thing ( apart from the Swiss who brought the NZ A team )

Let's analyse this... A sailing cup won by a team legally based in a State that has no access to the sea, contended by a team really based in a State where sailing is a national sport. And in other countries (like Italy) the majority of people doesn't give a toss about America's Cup, or they see it just as something nice that can be either easily forgotten or lightly celebrated. Just to make an example, I really can't imagine this sort of stuff happening anywhere here (or in the States) to celebrate the America's cup.

I feel your pain.

To get back on topic, great commentary by Morford. It's refreshing to read someone who's able to write with his guts without disconnecting his brain.

Quote from Jakg :

Ferrari said it was some good sh*t...

Certainly better than the one you find in McLaren. Ron Dennis must be having a bad trip right now.

Quote from Michel 4AGE :

This is much more serious..I wouldn't be suprised if the McLarens were "faster" throughout the last few races (or the Ferrari's slower heh) because of all this.

I wouldn't think much about such hypothesis at the moment. So far, surprises have been quite a few. Nobody could have easily predicted all of this. This mysterious white powder is indeed very powerful.

Quote from jayhawk :

As it stands now, the media here have almost blinding, hate filled rage towards our current administration...like they did with Regan, and Ford, and Nixon...see the trend?

I really don't see it that way, but maybe I didn't read all the newspapers you read...
Certainly I've been following with a certain consistency facts and opinions about Iraq in some newspapers during the war: The Washington Post, NYT, Usatoday, even the Army Times, and lots of others. You can even include Fox News and CNN.
If one cares to compare public opinions in newspapers where comments are available there will be no surprise. At the start of the war everybody wanted to grill Saddam, liberal and antiwar protesters. Now everybody wants to grill Bush. The liberals who were once thought to be sidelining with Saddam are now left alone; the bad mouthing goes towards the hawks, and comments with hawkish positions are generally regarded as pathetic whines.
This shift of position mirrors that of several newspapers.
But let's see an interesting case and try to put it in context as an example. The NYT suffered a scandal because of Judith Miller, widely regarded as the journalist who gave the most credibility to the WMD bullshit (sorry for the word, but if you think about it there's no better one). Now Judith Miller was jailed for contempt in Libby's case until she decided to speak, she was fired by NYT and all of her pieces of news regarding WMDs (along with stuff from other reporters) have been subjected to revision. It was yet another blow to NYT credibility.
In reality the NYT, like most American newspapers (and the American public) were favourable to the administration. The reason why the majority of them no longer sidelines with Bush & Co. can only be summed up with two words: miserable failure. Sympathy for liberal positions has no role in this process, since some so-called liberals are having a hard time trying to explain why they supported the war.

Quote from DeKo :

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FoswDCLkVBw
i prefer that

If someone does something like that in Italy he'll likely be under arrest or at least suspended for a lot of time, and I'm not joking at all. Bullies are not welcome in our schools lately, and they're not even fun. They've never been.

The affaire seems far more serious than predicted (sorry for all Ferrari haters, bad news for you )

Read these interesting and damning words straight from McLaren official site:

McLAREN RACING STATEMENT - 3 July 2007

Woking, United Kingdom, 3rd July 2007: McLaren became aware on the 3rd July 2007 that a senior member of its technical organisation was the subject of a Ferrari investigation regarding the receipt of technical information. The team has learnt that this individual had personally received a package of technical information from a Ferrari employee at the end of April.

Whilst McLaren has no involvement in the matter and condemns such actions it will fully co-operate with any investigation. The individual has in the meanwhile been suspended by the company pending a full and proper investigation of the matter.

No further comment will be made.

-----

Edit: on the same page there's an update. Even now McLaren doesn't try to deny the involvement of a member. There's only an offer of full cooperation to FIA. The extremely careful wording leaves an eerie feeling, like they totally recognise the seriousness of the issue removing all hints of emotions. Are they scared? I don't know. Worried? Of course. Indignant for an undeserved loss of reputation? Impossible to say. Hiding guilt? Once again, impossible to say.
I'm really curious to know the outcome of this story. Some comments I read on BBC seem to be taken straight from alt.conspiracy. Lunacy can be entertaining, sometimes.

Last edited by Albieg, Wed 4 Jul 2007, 17:26.