A Good Day of Tech

Posted on Tue 03/30/10 in Technical Interleude

Sometimes computer troubleshooting goes well, and I’d like to share my experience from the past 24 hours…

• I notice my computer running slowly — Web browser, google sync, I check my anti-virus program last update date and it is current. I check the running processes for any that might be hogging resources or look suspicious. Nothing abnormal, except that I realized I have WAY too many processes running.
• I hit up the event logs and discover that I’ve had some bad blocks being detected the past few days. Excellent, perhaps this is the cause of the slow down. No problem — my drives are in RAID 1 configuration, so there is another drive mirroring every write. The Raid Manager tells me that the drive that is having problems is the one from 2005 — not a bad life for a hard drive. I do a quick audit on my backup utility and see that it successfully completed a full backup over the weekend. I shut my computer down and decide to worry about it in the morning.
• The following morning, I pop the defective drive out and boot up, expecting a smooth ride and ready to order a replacement drive. Instead, BIOS hangs when detecting the processor. Not good! I pop the side of the case off again and re-seat the memory, look for blown or leaky capacitors, and confirm the processor fan is running smoothly. All checks good. I reboot. Still hanging.
• I am now getting concerned and not looking forward to the hours that lie ahead. I unplug the existing hard drive, cdrom and floppy drives. Still hanging. I step back and sigh, starring at my computer. I spot the USB cable in the front panel plugged into my Palm Pre. I recall that the other front port is defective and gives me a power surge warning when I accidentally plug something in it (note to self — tape off that port). I pull the USB cable and reboot. It begins to boot, as I knew it would.
• My desktop loads and the Internet connection is still struggling. Programs are loading ok though. I confirm that the other network users aren’t having issues. I reboot the DSL modem and router and refresh my network connection. Still nothing. I ping the router and the response time seems fine. I try Google’s DNS servers to see if they work better. Still crawling.
• At this point, I decide to take a pause for some coffee. Upon my return, I decide to check some basics. The trouble is isolated to my computer, so I could consider testing the operating system. I could boot off a Live CD and see if the problem persists. If it does, I would believe that it is something related to my Operating System. If it has the same issue, that would suggest it could be hardware related, being either my PC’s components or something along the wire. I decide to skip that test and, instead, try my PC’s network connection in another switch port. Eureka! That was it. Running smooth as Vanilla Ice now.

A few comments and lessons learned… It was strange that my hard drive began going bad at the same time the switch port was going bad, but hey, it happens. It is best to remove potential components (like my USB-connected Palm Pre, a hard drive, or pesky non-crucial add-in cards) from the equation when troubleshooting. And lastly, don’t forget to rule out easy-to-test intermittent hardware (such as the switch port or a network cable); those types of issues can be difficult to identify, especially if they aren’t completely dysfunctional. I learned that lesson in 1998 after troubleshooting a Windows 2000 box for about a day, cursing my fresh WinGate installation before finally noticing a small tear in the network cable : ) It raises my blood pressure just thinking about that.

P.S. Do yourself a favor and mark that switch port defective — tape is quick and easy.