random tech support

NedPC-2019 reborn!

Today, I girded myself for the troubleshooting I’d need to do to figure out what had possibly killed my PC. Here are the steps I took:

  1. Unplugged everything.
  2. Plugged the PC into my old 24″ monitor.
  3. Attached a wired keyboard and mouse.
  4. Turned the PC on.
  5. PC booted up normally, no error messages or anything.

Yes, it acted like nothing had happened. I took it back into the office, reconnected it, and I am currently typing on it. Event Viewer in Windows doesn’t reveal anything particularly revealing to suggest what happened. My best guess is that after I left early in the morning to go birding, something bad happened and since I was out all day, it was unable to resolve itself.

What happened? No idea. Vague theory:

  1. A program or process pegged the CPU at 100% and kept it there indefinitely. This caused the CPU fan to spin up to jet speed and it kept spinning like that.
  2. As the PC grew ever-hotter, it began to shut down applications and functions, until basically the PC was on, but nothing was actually running.
  3. When I got back and shut down the PC, it was too hot to power back up.
  4. Giving it time to cool off allowed it to reboot normally. Since the rogue app or process would have been killed in the process, it started up as if nothing had gone wrong.

Now, I don’t know if this is really what happened, but it feels right, or at least right-ish.

The question is, do I shut down my PC at night and start it up in the morning, or just keep running it 24/7 as per usual and assume the shutdown/freeze was a one-time thing? Decisions!

But at least for now, it is working, and that deserves a cat:

NedPC-2019, RIP 2019-2023

While I like to think I’m being dramatic with the title of this post, it is quite possible my current PC, which I built in the Before Times of April 2019, may, in fact, be dead.

When I went out birding yesterday around 8 a.m. it was working normally. When I returned around 4:30 p.m. I heard a loud fan roaring in the bedroom office. My first thought was the actual Dyson fan, but it was still set to a low speed and barely audible. The noise was coming from the PC. I observed a few things:

  • The displays had switched from the PC (on DisplayPort) to the Mac (on HDMI).
  • The aforementioned high-pitched fan noise.
  • The CTRL keyboard was off–it was still connected to the PC, but the backlight was off, indicating it was getting no power.
  • The CPU’s RGB lighting (a rather ominous-looking red ring) was still on.

I tried turning the PC off using the power switch on the front. No response. I tried the reset button, also no response.

I then hit the power switch on the PSU itself, and this did power the PC off.

It has yet to restart since. It appears to be getting no power at all, so my suspicion is either the PSU died (bad) or the motherboard or some component on it went (worse). I’ll be doing some testing today. I’m sure it will be a delight.

For the moment, though, I am a Mac-only guy1Technically I still have my ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but other than the keyboard, which is a decadent luxury for a laptop keyboard, I don’t really enjoy using it much.

I dropped a tactical nuke on Windows 11

Tonight I was playing Diablo 3 (I know, I know) and it started getting very laggy. Then it froze. Then I realized my entire PC had seized up, something that hasn’t happened in a long time. I thought about it, then decided to go ahead and nuke my Windows 11 install, using the handy Reset PC function:

I chose the less destructive first option, Keep my files.

The process went smoothly and a little faster than I expected. When it was done, I was prompted to log in and was greeted by all the yucky Windows 11 defaults and none of my previously installed apps. Windows 11 comes with a fairly large number of apps on its own, however.

I am now following my usual rule (that I always end up breaking) of only installing apps as I need them. We’ll see how it goes.

The list of re-installed software so far:

  • Firefox (I got this through the Microsoft Store, so I didn’t even need to open Edge to get it and switch over)
  • Discord (I tried getting this through the store, but it threw out an error, so I got it from the Discord site)
  • Obsidian (from the website, it’s not on the MS Store)
  • MS Office (from the included stub app)
  • Diarium (from the store)
  • TickTick (from the website)

As of this post, that’s it! This covers the essentials I use on a daily or near-daily basis. After this, I’ll only install an app when I am about to use it and gasp in horror because it is not there. Totally.

There are plenty of apps I’ll continue to install, but only as I use them. I mean it this time. Totally.

In terms of drivers, the only ones I’m really concerned with are for the mouse and video card. I decided to install the GeForce Experience to make the Nvidia drivers easier to install, but logging into it has turned into a gong show because it doesn’t seem to remember me. Or I don’t remember it. Fun! Actually, having investigated some more, I managed to get into my Nvidia account, get logged into the GeForce Experience app…only to have it tell me I already have the latest drivers installed. OK!

Anyway, I think this is enough PC fun for one night.

If Windows 11 continues to misbehave after this, I will do one of the following:

  • Go with the full nuke option
  • Curl up and cry
  • Both
  • Donuts!

Handy tech support tips

Free of charge, here are three amazing tech support tips. Is your technology giving you grief? Read on!

Tech tip #1: Power cycle your device. This means turning off whatever is giving you trouble and then turning it back on. Trust me, this works way more often than you’d think, but people seldom try this before calling their favorite tech support helpline.

Tech tip #2: Don’t visit fishy websites. Your computer will end up riddled with adware, malware, trojans or other malicious software you probably don’t want on your computer. Addendum: Don’t install any programs you didn’t specifically intend to install. NO EXCEPTIONS. If you are unclear about either of these things, just set your computer on fire now.

Tech tip #3: When you fill your car up with gas, do you do so by taking the nozzle of the gas hose, shoving it through an open window of the car and spraying the interior with fuel? I bet you don’t and do you know why? Because you are smart and learned how to pump gas properly. Spend some time learning how to do the tasks you need to do on your computer. The IBM PC came out in 1981. This was over 30 years ago. Computers are not new-fangled things, they are not weird nor are they the domain of nerds or geeks. They are tools and even if they haven’t advanced as much as we might have hoped for in 2016, it doesn’t change the fact that like any tool you use, you should learn how to use it. Addendum: a search engine like Google will give you most of the answers you will need, provided you search intelligently. If you are having problems printing, don’t do a search on “raspberry pants” unless you actually use raspberry pants to print.

Bonus tip: Is it plugged in? Unless it runs on batteries it should be plugged in.