Down to the bare metal

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by tw

That's nice. But what failed?

Nobody cares.

[Rock Steady]

Originally Posted by tw

That's nice. But what failed?

It appears not to matter. What is relevant is that the system is healthy. If he installs something that makes things bad, then he has found a problem, and should do a System Restore to get the system healthy again.

For the machine I am typing on now, I did the reformat/reinstall on July 24 and things have been great ever since. I am a remote employee and depend on this machine for my work. I handcrafted it about two years ago with parts from NewEgg.com

[BigV]

Originally Posted by tw

That's nice. But what failed?

Nothing failed, tw.

Do you wear socks? When you take them off at the end of the day, they haven't failed, I mean, you could wear them again tomorrow, right? But you might decide that they're just too stinky and toss them in the wash. Voila'! Good as new. Not really new, but cleaned out from the bad stuff that accumulated as they we put to their designed use.

Now if you wear a hole in the heel, you might darn them and wash them (or wash then darn, I guess) Then you might say they had failed. But that's not the situation here. It was running like crap and I gave it a very thorough tune up. grant and RS are right too. It doesn't matter, because I don't care. Perhaps it is/was knowable what was causing it, but to me, it was the cumulative weight of loading app after app after app. So, I guess that failure was what I corrected. Too many crapplications.

I'm reminded of an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon I love. Calvin asks his dad how do they determine what weight to put on the signs at the ends of the bridge that say "No trucks over ## tons" . Dad replied that they drive trucks over the bridge, each one heavier than the last, and when the bridge finally fails, the weigh the last truck to successfully cross the bridge, make a sign with that weight on it, rebuild the bridge exactly as it was before, then post the sign. Mom complains from off screen, but so what. It's not the only way to know, but it's one way. When this thing breaks again, I'll back up one notch and avoid that mistake in the future.

[tw]

Originally Posted by BigV

Nothing failed, tw.

Do you wear socks?

Amazing when one has no idea, then they must post insults to mask ignorance. BigV - you had a failure which is why the system required repair. You had a failure and still have no idea why the problem happened.

The question was "What failed".

BigV's answer is, "I have not a clue so I will discuss socks. Then may be no one will notice."

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by tw

Amazing when one has no idea, then they must post insults to mask ignorance.

Holy Christ, using a sock metaphor is now an insult? You're way too sensitive, dude.

Originally Posted by tw

BigV's answer is, "I have not a clue so I will discuss socks. Then may be no one will notice."

Originally Posted by Big V

It doesn't matter, because I don't care.

Yeah, he sure looks like he's worried about people noticing his ignorance, tw.

[laebedahs]

I understand what you mean, tw. But it is far more practical, at least with Windows computers, to take the quick route that will get you pretty much what you want, rather than the "correct" route of finding the exact problem and fixing it (this is true mostly for when you can actually sit down at the computer with virtually unlimited tools at your disposal, however when doing tech support over the phone it may be somewhat true).

#1 rule if a computer (Windows-based or even Linux-based) has been compromised (most Windows machines experiencing slugishness have been, one way or another), is to completely format it, wipe it clean, and start over (or restore from a known good backup). You don't know WHAT has been changed, replaced, removed, mangled, or corrupted, as such whenever you "clean" a computer, you never really know it's clean/working properly (you just gauge the cleaniness/proper working order by using it and make an assumption). Unless you want to go line by line through each plain-text or encoded-text files (not to mention you can't really do this effectively with binary files, even with all the text files you can't)? Now, I understand most machines probably won't have problems this deep (most compromised windows machines have been automatically compromised by a virus or trojan and are being used as zombies in a network).

[laebedahs]

Originally Posted by Rock Steady

"Brand name systems" what a joke.

We run one of the largest ad networks on generic dual AMD Opterons running Open Solaris. Peak, our decision server hits 6,000 requests per second. The application uses 12MB of main memory.

I repeat, I have not had many hardware problems. I always buy good parts, Asus MBs, Antec Cases, etc, much better stuff than the so called name brands, which use crap parts and short cuts.

Hardware is reliable. Software gets fucked up.

Here's to Asus motherboards! I own two, one's in my server and one's in my main PC. Nothing like the Opterons you're running, the main PC has a Mobile 2400+ (was the best bang-for-the-buck at the time, overclocked to 11.5 x 200 mhz fsb, 2.3 ghz total), the server is a XP 2400+ (Thorton core, 13 x 133 mhz fsb, 2 ghz total).