Keyboard Boot Virus?...

[Martin Brown]

On 18/04/2022 12:45, Mike Monett wrote:

Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/04/2022 01:55, Mike Monett wrote:
I recently ran into a major problem.

I have been having problems with 100% cpu overload on Youtube. This
cripples the video playback. I tried numerous methods to try to solve
the problem. None of them worked.

This may have been a warning that something hardware related was amiss.

I have seen CPU cores go to 100% usage doing nothing in a browser but
only when the old MS IE got itself into a stupid crazy state.

The other one was a portable where after a while a keyboard or mouse
would stop working and then all keys including the on off button would
cease responding. This was a pure hardware fault - race condition since
it occurred originally on Windows but was exactly reproducible (except
with different diagnostic reports) from a Linux bootable CD.

Booting from a Linux CD isn\'t a bad way to proceed if you think a PC has
been badly compromised. Very few viruses can damage a physical CD. There
are bootable AV CD ROM images available for this sort of battle.

Likewise with tools to detect obvious hardware glitched. Most common is
spurious interrupts generated by a design fault/race condition.

Faults which appear in both Windows and an independent Linux
implementation are usually hardware related.

This happened suddenly. Can you write to the keyboard?

I think a stuck key is a more likely fault and by several orders of
magnitude.


--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 4/19/2022 5:48 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 18/04/2022 12:45, Mike Monett wrote:
Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/04/2022 01:55, Mike Monett wrote:
I recently ran into a major problem.

I have been having problems with 100% cpu overload on Youtube. This
cripples the video playback. I tried numerous methods to try to solve
the problem. None of them worked.

This may have been a warning that something hardware related was amiss.

I have seen CPU cores go to 100% usage doing nothing in a browser but
only when the old MS IE got itself into a stupid crazy state.

The other one was a portable where after a while a keyboard or mouse
would stop working and then all keys including the on off button would
cease responding. This was a pure hardware fault - race condition since
it occurred originally on Windows but was exactly reproducible (except
with different diagnostic reports) from a Linux bootable CD.

Booting from a Linux CD isn\'t a bad way to proceed if you think a PC has
been badly compromised. Very few viruses can damage a physical CD. There
are bootable AV CD ROM images available for this sort of battle.

Likewise with tools to detect obvious hardware glitched. Most common is
spurious interrupts generated by a design fault/race condition.

Faults which appear in both Windows and an independent Linux
implementation are usually hardware related.

This happened suddenly. Can you write to the keyboard?

I think a stuck key is a more likely fault and by several orders of magnitude.

Or anything else that can generate multiple/spurious events.
I\'ve seen USB devices disconnect and reconnect, repeatedly, without
\"human intervention\". This could be a problem *in* the device
(intermittent connection, failing power, firmware bug) *or* in the
host (perhaps a lack of resources that cause a repeated attempt
to reconnect after aborting the previous connection).

[I just discarded a thumb drive that behaved in this way. I\'m pretty sure
it is a mechanical issue -- broken solder joint? -- as I can make things
better or worse by applying pressure to the device while it is installed
(but I have no desire to keep my finger on a drive just to use it \"reliably\"]

Surely simple to test if a device *is* the source of a problem (remove,
replace, verify, reinstall) -- though by no means a guarantee given the
number of variables that can come into play in the software.

 

[Mike]

In article <t3n1nr$8bf$1@dont-email.me>,
Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[I just discarded a thumb drive that behaved in this way. I\'m pretty sure
it is a mechanical issue -- broken solder joint? -- as I can make things
better or worse by applying pressure to the device while it is installed
(but I have no desire to keep my finger on a drive just to use it \"reliably\"]

Finger?

You should be keeping a *thumb* on it. That\'s why it\'s called a thumb drive!



--
--------------------------------------+------------------------------------
Mike Brown: mjb[-at-]signal11.org.uk | http://www.signal11.org.uk

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Mike Monett <spamme@not.com> wrote:

Mike Monett <spamme@not.com> wrote:

[...]

Changing the motherboard and loading the most recent backup solved the
problem and allowed me to get back online.

Changing the motherboard showed the problem was not with the system. Changing
the keyboard solved the problem. Can you write into the keyboard prom?

You can \"write\" or send data to any USB device. reading and writing data
is required for USB to work, period. Negotiation is required unlike
something more passive like RS-232 where you could just start sending data
out of the blue in 3 wire mode.

Do keyboards have a nonvolatile memory you can write to? I haven\'t seen
one you can write to, but there\'s nothing stopping you from making one
that is writable. You could probably collected data on the keyboard
with some crafty use of the scroll lock indicator, since this is set on
the computer itself.

Unless it has a hub or enumerates at some other device, it will still just
be a keyboard, or any weird flavot of a HID.

If you really want to test for a stuck key or other brokenness, boot a
runtime linux and run the \"showkey --scancodes\" command. It will show what
the keyboard is sending. Scan codes are completely different for USB than
for PS/2 keyboards.

FWIW, the way linux and windows handle USB keyboards is different in odd
ways. I\'ve written keyboard emulators that worked fine with windows, but
needed timing adjustments to work with linux. There are also variations in
how various keyboards send data. Windows is real tolerant so there\'s no
effective difference unless you\'re really looking for it.

 

[server]

TTman <kraken.sankey@gmail.com> wrote in
news:t3j7hd$h2v$1@dont-email.me:

On 18/04/2022 01:55, Mike Monett wrote:
I recently ran into a major problem.

I have been having problems with 100% cpu overload on Youtube.
This cripples the video playback. I tried numerous methods to try
to solve the problem. None of them worked.

I then looked at the Window firewall. Since I have numerous NAT
firewalls between my computer and the internet, I felt this was
not necessary and I disabled it.

A short while later, I ran into very serious problems. When I
tried to reboot, the screen would go absolutely crazy, and
continually reboot itself.

I tried to diagnose the problem. I switched motherboards. This
did not help.

I next examined the power supply to see if faulty voltages could
cause the problem.

But after 3 decades and trillions of power supplied delivered,
you would conclude if there was a problem with the power on
signal, someone would have found it by now.

I examined the onboard memory. You can\'t do much with this since
any information disappears when power is turned off.

I examined the cmos ram. This is not much help, since it only
contains 64 bytes of memory. Even so, I removed the battery. This
did not help.

The only thing left after all this was the keyboard. I replaced
it, and lo and behold, the problem disappeard.

1. Is it possible that some kind of virus could be written to the
keyboard ROM? There is plenty of memory available since it has to
map all the keypresses to USB. And it does have some sort of
writeable memory since you can turn off NumLock during boot.

2. If there is some kind of new virus coming around, it could be
deadly. It completly disables any computer, since it attacks the
most elementary component. Remember the \"Press F2 to continue\" of
the DOS days? It showed up when there was no keyboard connected!

Whatever the source, the problem completely obliterated the ssd
drive I was using at the time. ChkDsk found numerous errors on
the drive and it would not boot. I replaced it with a backup and
this enabled me to get back on line.

Recommendations:

1. Keep a spare keyboard available.
2. Turn on Windows firewall.
3. Keep a backup computer updated and available at all times.

Good Luck.



are you related to Skybuck ?

Brilliant.

And oh... that was a troll post.
IF a \"ChkDsk finds \"problems\" on an SSD...

The SSD is blown. Probably from stupid use of ChkDsk way too many
times or even an idiot \"defragging\" his drive. Neither of which is
needed on an SSD. Ever.

 

[Mike Monett]

Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

> On 18/04/2022 12:45, Mike Monett wrote:

[...]

This happened suddenly. Can you write to the keyboard?

I think a stuck key is a more likely fault and by several orders of
magnitude.

I have had plenty of stuck keys. I tried to check by pressing all the keys to
see if one was stuck on or jammed. None were.

A fault with the Enter key is possible, but it would scroll the screen up.
This problem is completely different. The entire screen flashes then flashes
again. What key would do that?



--
MRM

 

[Martin Brown]

On 24/04/2022 07:54, Mike Monett wrote:

Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/04/2022 12:45, Mike Monett wrote:

[...]

This happened suddenly. Can you write to the keyboard?

I think a stuck key is a more likely fault and by several orders of
magnitude.

I have had plenty of stuck keys. I tried to check by pressing all the keys to
see if one was stuck on or jammed. None were.

A fault with the Enter key is possible, but it would scroll the screen up.
This problem is completely different. The entire screen flashes then flashes
again. What key would do that?

The \"clear screen\" key perhaps?

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 4/24/2022 1:25 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 24/04/2022 07:54, Mike Monett wrote:
Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/04/2022 12:45, Mike Monett wrote:

[...]

This happened suddenly. Can you write to the keyboard?

I think a stuck key is a more likely fault and by several orders of
magnitude.
I have had plenty of stuck keys. I tried to check by pressing all the keys to
see if one was stuck on or jammed. None were.

A fault with the Enter key is possible, but it would scroll the screen up.
This problem is completely different. The entire screen flashes then flashes
again. What key would do that?

The \"clear screen\" key perhaps?

Or, a keyboard malfunctioning in a way that breaks its contract with the
BIOS (this is preboot, right?). Programmers are notoriously bad at imagining
how hardware can fail and coding defensively enough to protect their systems.

A behaving keyboard is a trivial design -- up, down, repeat. So, equally
trivial expectations of what that keyboard will deliver to the PC.

[I\'ve got a keyboard that is often \"not recognized\" by it\'s PC -- until
Windows starts. I.e., none of the indicators illuminate (nor does the
ball-less mouse). This makes for some interesting conditions when you want
to interrupt the boot process beyond opting for an alternate boot device
(which the boot order will already handle)!]

Of course, one should be able to make the problem appear and disappear,
ON DEMAND, just by replugging the suspect keyboard. And, if the problem
did NOT reappear, that casts suspicion on whether or not the keyboard
*was* the source of the problem (and not a bad connection, noisy power,
\"gremlins\", etc.).

I had a disk drive *appear* to fail, recently. I pulled it. Recovered
its contents. Then, put it on my \"sanitizer\" -- to scrub it clean AND
give me an assessment of it\'s reliability (the sanitizer is intended to
\"qualify\" drives for reuse, purging them of their contents before that).
It passed with flying colors! It\'s back in the machine, waiting to see
if the machine misbehaves, again.

When I get a chance, I\'ll open the machine and check caps, supplies,
pull/reseat memory, processor, etc. But, after a ~week running 24/7,
it is still purring nicely!

 

[Mike Monett]

Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 24/04/2022 07:54, Mike Monett wrote:
Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/04/2022 12:45, Mike Monett wrote:

[...]

This happened suddenly. Can you write to the keyboard?

I think a stuck key is a more likely fault and by several orders of
magnitude.

I have had plenty of stuck keys. I tried to check by pressing all the
keys to see if one was stuck on or jammed. None were.

A fault with the Enter key is possible, but it would scroll the screen
up. This problem is completely different. The entire screen flashes
then flashes again. What key would do that?

The \"clear screen\" key perhaps?

That appears to be a hidden key on the keyboard, although it appears in DOS
and all versions of windows starting with 95 as CLS. But it actually clears
the screen and only leaves a prompt.



--
MRM

 

[legg]

On Mon, 18 Apr 2022 15:28:12 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/18/2022 3:07 PM, legg wrote:
Booted into power-off, then powered on into the OS log-in screen
and POWERED OFF AGAIN - within the count of a few chimpanzees.

But the MB is known good?

Did it seem to deliberately shut itself down? Or, just \"die\"
(e.g., like a power supply shutting down due to load)?
IIRC, the \"4 second shutdown\" is (was?) implemented in hardware;
that can be a low-end figure for how long you might expect the
system to stay up, at a minimum.

Remove all loads (disks, PCI/PCIe/etc. cards). Remove *memory*.
EXPECT it to complain about \"no memory\" when it boots. If this
doesn\'t happen, then the fundamentals aren\'t working.

[You can also pull the CPU and some MBs will signal an error
based on that, as well]

Trying to figure out if a power button or harness failure can be
responsible. Surely those signals are processed up the wazoo after
they hit the motherboard - can\'t just shut it down cold?

If it was at 4 seconds, you could hypothesize the power button
was \"stuck\"/shorted/miswired (one problem I\'ve seen with generic
MBs is the sheer number of connections that have to be made...
disk activity indicator, power button, reset (sometimes), pigtails
to USB and serial ports, etc.

Vibration around the procesor? Processor itself ? (carried over
to replacement MB) Dirty processor socket?

For the hell of it, try removing the processor to see if it alerts.
Or, if the symptoms change.

Wouldn\'t be surprised if the new HDD is now toast.

Unplug it for the time being. Easy to check that on another machine
(I prefer a USB enclosure so the disk is isolated from the test machines
power, SATA controller, etc.)

Well, it\'s not the processor (swapped out) or bios (reflashed).
Re-cycled PSU, in the off-chance that the new one was to blame,
but made no difference. Optical drive has failed in the meantime.
Rechecked harnessing. Reran memtest.

Am at point where I\'m reinstalling OS fresh with each attempt.
Gets to the time zone and password settings, then shuts off
in the next process (of hardware enumeration?).

Time to shut it down for good.

RL

 

[Don Y]

On 4/26/2022 5:12 PM, legg wrote:

On Mon, 18 Apr 2022 15:28:12 -0700, Don Y
blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/18/2022 3:07 PM, legg wrote:
Booted into power-off, then powered on into the OS log-in screen
and POWERED OFF AGAIN - within the count of a few chimpanzees.

But the MB is known good?

Did it seem to deliberately shut itself down? Or, just \"die\"
(e.g., like a power supply shutting down due to load)?
IIRC, the \"4 second shutdown\" is (was?) implemented in hardware;
that can be a low-end figure for how long you might expect the
system to stay up, at a minimum.

Remove all loads (disks, PCI/PCIe/etc. cards). Remove *memory*.
EXPECT it to complain about \"no memory\" when it boots. If this
doesn\'t happen, then the fundamentals aren\'t working.

[You can also pull the CPU and some MBs will signal an error
based on that, as well]

Trying to figure out if a power button or harness failure can be
responsible. Surely those signals are processed up the wazoo after
they hit the motherboard - can\'t just shut it down cold?

If it was at 4 seconds, you could hypothesize the power button
was \"stuck\"/shorted/miswired (one problem I\'ve seen with generic
MBs is the sheer number of connections that have to be made...
disk activity indicator, power button, reset (sometimes), pigtails
to USB and serial ports, etc.

Vibration around the procesor? Processor itself ? (carried over
to replacement MB) Dirty processor socket?

For the hell of it, try removing the processor to see if it alerts.
Or, if the symptoms change.

Wouldn\'t be surprised if the new HDD is now toast.

Unplug it for the time being. Easy to check that on another machine
(I prefer a USB enclosure so the disk is isolated from the test machines
power, SATA controller, etc.)

Well, it\'s not the processor (swapped out) or bios (reflashed).
Re-cycled PSU, in the off-chance that the new one was to blame,
but made no difference. Optical drive has failed in the meantime.
Rechecked harnessing. Reran memtest.

Could be a bad solder joint, broken trace, etc. Too much trouble
to chase down, definitively.

Am at point where I\'m reinstalling OS fresh with each attempt.
Gets to the time zone and password settings, then shuts off
in the next process (of hardware enumeration?).

Ah. If you\'d been able to install it successfully *once*, then
taking an image would save you the trouble of going through MS\'s
painfully slow installer.

> Time to shut it down for good.

Yup. Take it out back and shoot it.

Nowadays, most machines aren\'t very expensive to replace. All
the real \"value\" is whatever YOU have added to the disk drive...

I\'ve very little patience for tools that don\'t perform as expected.
Hardware is usually pretty easy to identify as faulty (swap out, try
a second instance, etc.). Software is a PITA as you tend to be
dependent on the supplier to fix bugs. And, most suppliers\' process
is to just give you a NEWER set of bugs!

Moral: identify quirky behavior and discover ways to work around it
or compensate for it instead of perpetually replacing one known
behavior with a new yet-to-be-known behavior!

[\"Update? No thank you...\"]

Take the opportunity to \"treat yourself\" :>

 

[John Walliker]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2022 at 10:33:13 UTC+1, Don Y wrote:

On 4/26/2022 5:12 PM, legg wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2022 15:28:12 -0700, Don Y
blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/18/2022 3:07 PM, legg wrote:
Booted into power-off, then powered on into the OS log-in screen
and POWERED OFF AGAIN - within the count of a few chimpanzees.

But the MB is known good?

Did it seem to deliberately shut itself down? Or, just \"die\"
(e.g., like a power supply shutting down due to load)?
IIRC, the \"4 second shutdown\" is (was?) implemented in hardware;
that can be a low-end figure for how long you might expect the
system to stay up, at a minimum.

Remove all loads (disks, PCI/PCIe/etc. cards). Remove *memory*.
EXPECT it to complain about \"no memory\" when it boots. If this
doesn\'t happen, then the fundamentals aren\'t working.

[You can also pull the CPU and some MBs will signal an error
based on that, as well]

Trying to figure out if a power button or harness failure can be
responsible. Surely those signals are processed up the wazoo after
they hit the motherboard - can\'t just shut it down cold?

If it was at 4 seconds, you could hypothesize the power button
was \"stuck\"/shorted/miswired (one problem I\'ve seen with generic
MBs is the sheer number of connections that have to be made...
disk activity indicator, power button, reset (sometimes), pigtails
to USB and serial ports, etc.

Vibration around the procesor? Processor itself ? (carried over
to replacement MB) Dirty processor socket?

For the hell of it, try removing the processor to see if it alerts.
Or, if the symptoms change.

Wouldn\'t be surprised if the new HDD is now toast.

Unplug it for the time being. Easy to check that on another machine
(I prefer a USB enclosure so the disk is isolated from the test machines
power, SATA controller, etc.)

Well, it\'s not the processor (swapped out) or bios (reflashed).
Re-cycled PSU, in the off-chance that the new one was to blame,
but made no difference. Optical drive has failed in the meantime.
Rechecked harnessing. Reran memtest.
Could be a bad solder joint, broken trace, etc. Too much trouble
to chase down, definitively.
Am at point where I\'m reinstalling OS fresh with each attempt.
Gets to the time zone and password settings, then shuts off
in the next process (of hardware enumeration?).
Ah. If you\'d been able to install it successfully *once*, then
taking an image would save you the trouble of going through MS\'s
painfully slow installer.
Time to shut it down for good.
Yup. Take it out back and shoot it.

Nowadays, most machines aren\'t very expensive to replace. All
the real \"value\" is whatever YOU have added to the disk drive...

I\'ve very little patience for tools that don\'t perform as expected.
Hardware is usually pretty easy to identify as faulty (swap out, try
a second instance, etc.). Software is a PITA as you tend to be
dependent on the supplier to fix bugs. And, most suppliers\' process
is to just give you a NEWER set of bugs!

Moral: identify quirky behavior and discover ways to work around it
or compensate for it instead of perpetually replacing one known
behavior with a new yet-to-be-known behavior!

[\"Update? No thank you...\"]

Take the opportunity to \"treat yourself\" :

One of the weirdest hardware oddities is an industrial motherboard
(with soldered in cpu) that appears to work fine with Windows but will
not complete the installation process for Linux (I tried several varieties).
Its definitely not the memory or power supply or BIOS version or settings
(or the keyboard).
Needless to say I don\'t trust it running Windows either so its on my
scrap pile. I have another one, bought at the same time and configured
identically, which works fine with both.
John

 

[Don Y]

On 4/27/2022 2:57 AM, John Walliker wrote:

One of the weirdest hardware oddities is an industrial motherboard
(with soldered in cpu) that appears to work fine with Windows but will
not complete the installation process for Linux (I tried several varieties).
Its definitely not the memory or power supply or BIOS version or settings
(or the keyboard).

Windows tries very hard NOT to complain about hardware. I guess the
thinking is that the user wouldn\'t be able to do much *if* it complained.
And, would likely see *windows* as The Problem.

Often, the only way to expose a hardware problem, in Windows, is to
go *looking* for it (logs, etc.). Even \"failures\" tend to be \"polite\"
(write error; your data is lost!)

OTOH, my UN*X boxen tend to complain, more, when they encounter
odd situations (like an intermittent SCSI cable). I suspect the
folks coding them weren\'t as tolerant of \"unexpected events\".

Needless to say I don\'t trust it running Windows either so its on my
scrap pile. I have another one, bought at the same time and configured
identically, which works fine with both.

Yeah, if you\'ve *seen* it screwup, how can you rationalize ignoring
that fact?

I\'ve got an AiO that I use as a \"console\" to talk to my archive/repository.
It misbehaved, recently. Suspecting a failing disk, I replaced that.
But, then determined the original disk to be functioning properly
(so, the problem lies elsewhere!)

OTOH, as it is simply taking typed commands and passing them along
to another node on the network, it is very unlikely that it will
\"silently\" corrupt some of my SQL in a way that the other node
won\'t detect as incorrect. And, simultaneously corrupt the
reply from that node in such a way that I won\'t consider it
suspect!

(i.e., if it screws up, again, I\'ll be there to witness it!)

I\'ve always shuddered when I hear folks overclocking machines
or using recapped motherboards; how do you know the system is
really working as intended, now? If you rendered a 3D object,
would you be able to tell if it messed up one of 100,000 polygons?
Two? Five hundred??

 

[John Walliker]

On Wednesday, 27 April 2022 at 11:31:52 UTC+1, Don Y wrote:

On 4/27/2022 2:57 AM, John Walliker wrote:

I\'ve always shuddered when I hear folks overclocking machines
or using recapped motherboards; how do you know the system is
really working as intended, now? If you rendered a 3D object,
would you be able to tell if it messed up one of 100,000 polygons?
Two? Five hundred??

I once had a PC/AT clone motherboard where the supplier had changed the
main clock oscillator for a faster one. It worked fine for nearly everything,
but a multi-channel audio acquisition board I had designed did not work
properly. It turned out that the setup and hold times were completely
wrong on the DMA channels so my hardware failed. After I replaced the
oscillator with one having the correct frequency everything was fine again.
In contrast, I once needed to use a TMS320C51 DSP at a combination of
power supply voltage and clock frequency that was not allowed in the data
sheet rules, but which looked as if it should work reliably. It was a medical
application. In those days, TI had good technical support in the UK and I was
given some test code which exercised the critical timing paths that were known
to be the most likely to fail under voltage or frequency stress conditions.
This was built into the power-on startup code, so each device was known to be
happy with its operating conditions at that point.

John

 

[legg]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 02:32:56 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/26/2022 5:12 PM, legg wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2022 15:28:12 -0700, Don Y
blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/18/2022 3:07 PM, legg wrote:
Booted into power-off, then powered on into the OS log-in screen
and POWERED OFF AGAIN - within the count of a few chimpanzees.

But the MB is known good?

Did it seem to deliberately shut itself down? Or, just \"die\"
(e.g., like a power supply shutting down due to load)?
IIRC, the \"4 second shutdown\" is (was?) implemented in hardware;
that can be a low-end figure for how long you might expect the
system to stay up, at a minimum.

Remove all loads (disks, PCI/PCIe/etc. cards). Remove *memory*.
EXPECT it to complain about \"no memory\" when it boots. If this
doesn\'t happen, then the fundamentals aren\'t working.

[You can also pull the CPU and some MBs will signal an error
based on that, as well]

Trying to figure out if a power button or harness failure can be
responsible. Surely those signals are processed up the wazoo after
they hit the motherboard - can\'t just shut it down cold?

If it was at 4 seconds, you could hypothesize the power button
was \"stuck\"/shorted/miswired (one problem I\'ve seen with generic
MBs is the sheer number of connections that have to be made...
disk activity indicator, power button, reset (sometimes), pigtails
to USB and serial ports, etc.

Vibration around the procesor? Processor itself ? (carried over
to replacement MB) Dirty processor socket?

For the hell of it, try removing the processor to see if it alerts.
Or, if the symptoms change.

Wouldn\'t be surprised if the new HDD is now toast.

Unplug it for the time being. Easy to check that on another machine
(I prefer a USB enclosure so the disk is isolated from the test machines
power, SATA controller, etc.)

Well, it\'s not the processor (swapped out) or bios (reflashed).
Re-cycled PSU, in the off-chance that the new one was to blame,
but made no difference. Optical drive has failed in the meantime.
Rechecked harnessing. Reran memtest.

Could be a bad solder joint, broken trace, etc. Too much trouble
to chase down, definitively.

Am at point where I\'m reinstalling OS fresh with each attempt.
Gets to the time zone and password settings, then shuts off
in the next process (of hardware enumeration?).

Ah. If you\'d been able to install it successfully *once*, then
taking an image would save you the trouble of going through MS\'s
painfully slow installer.

Time to shut it down for good.

Yup. Take it out back and shoot it.

Nowadays, most machines aren\'t very expensive to replace. All
the real \"value\" is whatever YOU have added to the disk drive...

Just trying to get it safe enough to stick a system HDD into it.
It already ate one. The back-up will not work in new hardware,
but I guess there\'s no choice. In cat years, it\'s no spring
chicken. The LXLE dual-boot was intended to nurse the thing
into it\'s golden years . . .was just teaching LXLE to print.
Brings a tear to the eye.

A HDD is a place to stick your data, until it \'goes\'. HDD rel
has seemed to improve for me, particularly since the adoption
of SATA. Sticking a reliable HDD into junk doesn\'t raise the
reliability of the junk.

A lot of things are built on crumbly foundations these days.

RL

 

[Don Y]

On 4/27/2022 4:53 AM, John Walliker wrote:

On Wednesday, 27 April 2022 at 11:31:52 UTC+1, Don Y wrote:
On 4/27/2022 2:57 AM, John Walliker wrote:

I\'ve always shuddered when I hear folks overclocking machines
or using recapped motherboards; how do you know the system is
really working as intended, now? If you rendered a 3D object,
would you be able to tell if it messed up one of 100,000 polygons?
Two? Five hundred??

I once had a PC/AT clone motherboard where the supplier had changed the
main clock oscillator for a faster one. It worked fine for nearly everything,
but a multi-channel audio acquisition board I had designed did not work
properly. It turned out that the setup and hold times were completely
wrong on the DMA channels so my hardware failed.

Be thankful it was a hard/observable failure! Imagine if it had been
intermittent -- plaguing your product \"in the field\"!

After I replaced the
oscillator with one having the correct frequency everything was fine again.
In contrast, I once needed to use a TMS320C51 DSP at a combination of
power supply voltage and clock frequency that was not allowed in the data
sheet rules, but which looked as if it should work reliably. It was a medical
application. In those days, TI had good technical support in the UK and I was
given some test code which exercised the critical timing paths that were known
to be the most likely to fail under voltage or frequency stress conditions.
This was built into the power-on startup code, so each device was known to be
happy with its operating conditions at that point.

You\'ve more guts than I. I like being able to point to a document and
prove that my design is 100% compliant so any \"problems\" lie in the components
being used. (regardless of temperature, power supply noise, etc.)

I like to dick with RESET on processors as it often lets me implement
special features cheaply. But, RESET is often a poorly defined event.
I can empirically verify that a particular design MIGHT work... but, have
no guarantee that some mask revision won\'t break my solution.

Give me something that I can hang my hat on to justify to boss/client/customer
that my approach has addressed due diligence... or, I\'ll look for another,
better documented device -- or approach.

 

[Don Y]

On 4/27/2022 7:35 AM, legg wrote:

Nowadays, most machines aren\'t very expensive to replace. All
the real \"value\" is whatever YOU have added to the disk drive...

Just trying to get it safe enough to stick a system HDD into it.

What is your goal AFTER that? Are you trying to recover data from
some OTHER drive present in the system? Or, are you hoping to
actually USE the system once the system drive is installed?

I keep external USB drive enclosures (and/or \"docks\") on hand
to let me \"mount\" a drive on some other system -- without
worrying about how the drive will dick with the hardware *in*
that system. If the drive has a problem, then the DRIVE has a
problem, not the system that I\'m using to examine it.

> It already ate one. The back-up will not work in new hardware,

PATA vs SATA? (hence the value of keeping external USB drives
around as \"test fixtures\")

but I guess there\'s no choice. In cat years, it\'s no spring
chicken. The LXLE dual-boot was intended to nurse the thing
into it\'s golden years . . .was just teaching LXLE to print.
Brings a tear to the eye.

A HDD is a place to stick your data, until it \'goes\'. HDD rel
has seemed to improve for me, particularly since the adoption
of SATA.

I still have small (megabyte!) IDE disks that power some of my
older (collectable) kit. But, the total PoHr stays low because
they don\'t see much use. And, as they are so small, it is easy to
keep an image of the entire system around -- on something
as small as a CD-ROM! <frown>

Newer drives (in my workstations) tend to run 24/7/365 so I\'m
potentially at more risk. But, most of the content on my
machines is \"applications\" and \"libraries\" (of sorts). Which
can be restored from their originals, if need be.

Sticking a reliable HDD into junk doesn\'t raise the
reliability of the junk.

Consider moving the media into a NAS or SAN? The advantage being
that you can share the media \"for free\".

> A lot of things are built on crumbly foundations these days.

People want features, not reliability.

And, developers often find improving reliability/robustness to
be \"interesting\" -- compared to starting off in some NEW direction
(on a new, half-baked feature).

My solution has been to \"settle\" for something known. And, then
replicate it so I\'m not reliant on a single unit.

 

[legg]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 13:18:24 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/27/2022 7:35 AM, legg wrote:
Nowadays, most machines aren\'t very expensive to replace. All
the real \"value\" is whatever YOU have added to the disk drive...

Just trying to get it safe enough to stick a system HDD into it.

What is your goal AFTER that? Are you trying to recover data from
some OTHER drive present in the system? Or, are you hoping to
actually USE the system once the system drive is installed?

I keep external USB drive enclosures (and/or \"docks\") on hand
to let me \"mount\" a drive on some other system -- without
worrying about how the drive will dick with the hardware *in*
that system. If the drive has a problem, then the DRIVE has a
problem, not the system that I\'m using to examine it.

It already ate one. The back-up will not work in new hardware,

PATA vs SATA? (hence the value of keeping external USB drives
around as \"test fixtures\")

but I guess there\'s no choice. In cat years, it\'s no spring
chicken. The LXLE dual-boot was intended to nurse the thing
into it\'s golden years . . .was just teaching LXLE to print.
Brings a tear to the eye.

A HDD is a place to stick your data, until it \'goes\'. HDD rel
has seemed to improve for me, particularly since the adoption
of SATA.

I still have small (megabyte!) IDE disks that power some of my
older (collectable) kit. But, the total PoHr stays low because
they don\'t see much use. And, as they are so small, it is easy to
keep an image of the entire system around -- on something
as small as a CD-ROM! <frown

I\'m developing an aversion to attempting an LXLE dual boot system
(with an MS OS). I\'m looking at my HDD morgue and now see 4 dead
HDD associated with such an endeavor.

Two were in Dell refurbs - now both still running with non-dual
boot clones (WXP)in 2020, The other two are from this attempt
in the PC Chips A13G+ v3.0 home-brew (W2K). This is now officially
junk.

There are only two things in common; LXLE and me.

A Ubuntu single or dual boot (it doesn\'t seem to care -
on separate hard drives) is still in progress.

Meanwhile, other obligations call.

RL

 

[Don Y]

On 4/28/2022 11:01 AM, legg wrote:

I\'m developing an aversion to attempting an LXLE dual boot system
(with an MS OS). I\'m looking at my HDD morgue and now see 4 dead
HDD associated with such an endeavor.

I\'m having a hard time thinking that they are truly *dead* (as in
\"scrap\"). Have you tried:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/r<drivedevice> bs=1024k count=100
just to ensure there\'s no cruft on it -- esp the boot/MBR area?

Two were in Dell refurbs - now both still running with non-dual
boot clones (WXP)in 2020, The other two are from this attempt
in the PC Chips A13G+ v3.0 home-brew (W2K). This is now officially
junk.

There are only two things in common; LXLE and me.

A Ubuntu single or dual boot (it doesn\'t seem to care -
on separate hard drives) is still in progress.

I used to run a \"quad boot\" tower -- {Net,Open,Free}BSD
(not a fan of Linux, nor its license!) plus Windows -- when
I was writing drivers. Back then, a 4G drive was $1K so
it was easier to put 4 of them in a box than to try to
share a single drive.

Now, I have a clean demarcation between boxes. It\'s a
Windows box or a Sun box or a *BSD box... but never more
than one.

You might consider running your non-windows boxen headless
and installing an X server *under* Windows. Or, a bunch of
VMs. I run an ESXi server for my VMs -- so any workstation
can run any VM, served over the wire. Or, copy the VMDK onto
the host and run it locally if A/V performance is an issue.
(my VMs are on a big SAN)

Bottom line: figure out how to REDUCE your sysadmin tasks
and the time wasted on them.

> Meanwhile, other obligations call.

Always! It\'s a wonder we get ANYTHING done!

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/28/2022 11:01 AM, legg wrote:
I\'m developing an aversion to attempting an LXLE dual boot system
(with an MS OS). I\'m looking at my HDD morgue and now see 4 dead
HDD associated with such an endeavor.

I\'m having a hard time thinking that they are truly *dead* (as in
\"scrap\"). Have you tried:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/r<drivedevice> bs=1024k count=100
just to ensure there\'s no cruft on it -- esp the boot/MBR area?

Two were in Dell refurbs - now both still running with non-dual
boot clones (WXP)in 2020, The other two are from this attempt
in the PC Chips A13G+ v3.0 home-brew (W2K). This is now officially
junk.

There are only two things in common; LXLE and me.

A Ubuntu single or dual boot (it doesn\'t seem to care -
on separate hard drives) is still in progress.

I used to run a \"quad boot\" tower -- {Net,Open,Free}BSD
(not a fan of Linux, nor its license!) plus Windows -- when
I was writing drivers. Back then, a 4G drive was $1K so
it was easier to put 4 of them in a box than to try to
share a single drive.

Now, I have a clean demarcation between boxes. It\'s a
Windows box or a Sun box or a *BSD box... but never more
than one.

You might consider running your non-windows boxen headless
and installing an X server *under* Windows. Or, a bunch of

No, don\'t run X. X is garbage, always has been, always will be.

VMs. I run an ESXi server for my VMs -- so any workstation
can run any VM, served over the wire. Or, copy the VMDK onto
the host and run it locally if A/V performance is an issue.
(my VMs are on a big SAN)

Lol, this clown has a \"big SAN\", but can\'t quite tackle NTP yet.

Bottom line: figure out how to REDUCE your sysadmin tasks
and the time wasted on them.

Say the guy running a \"sun box\", which is likely some 22 year old piece of
shit with no networking enabled.