Computer problems

I'd like to claim computer problems as the reason I haven't blogged for over two months, but I can't. And the prodigious rate of blogging that my friend Skiing Jim has kept up over the past few days makes me feel ashamed.

Back to computer problems though. I've been pushed back to blogging by a sense that if I blog about the computer problem that afflicted me over Christmas and the New Year, I might help some other poor soul from going through the same hell.

I do most of my computer work on a 4-year old Medion 8818 Windows Media PC bought from Aldi. I've been pleased with this purchase in the main, even though I don't use the TV function. The only significant problem I'd had until recently was the power supply breaking after the PC had just moved out of warranty.

And then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, the computer wouldn't display things. I assumed, based on past experience, that the monitor had died, and since I was very busy I adopted the easy solution and started using a laptop. Then as I started my two week Christmas break, with only a family Christmas to attend to (buy the turkey, cook the turkey, eat the turkey, ...) I had time to start addressing the computer problem. First off, it wasn't the monitor. The 24" IIyama was working just fine, the problem was the computer. I diagnosed the graphics card as the source of the problem. I went through the usual "wouldn't this be a great time to buy a new computer" and rapidly decided that £50 for a graphics cards seemed like a good deal compared to £2500 for a fully configured 27" - besides which, what would I do with the spare 24" monitor?

The Medion 8818 had come fitted with an NVidia GeForce 7650 card. This was (note the tense) an OEM only card and my favoured approach of replacing the old card with an identical new one wasn't possible. We were now in the strange period between Christmas and New Year where it is not feasible to buy electronics on-line. So, after a bit of research it was off to Mr Curry Dixons Digital Emporium and Washing Machine Shop to pick up the PNY NVidia GeForce GT 430 graphics card I'd ordered on-line. It was a couple of days before I disassembled the PC and replaced the graphics card. I powered on, the PC went through its boot sequence (hooray), the XP splash screen displayed (hooray) and then the screen went blank and the PC went inactive. After the extensive use of safe-mode, VGA mode, etc. it seemed that whenever the PC got to the stage where it had to fire up the NVidia drivers the display system stopped working. The good news was that the PC worked fine in VGA mode so I could finally update the podcasts on my iPod. I used the PC like this for a couple of days, even getting into the habit of only scrolling a page at a time - just like the old days.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed likely I had a software problem. I assumed that with the repeated powering-off while active, installing and removing drivers, etc., I'd messed up the operating system. Time to reinstall; something I didn't want to do, knowing that the next few weeks would be taken up re-installing all the infrequently used but necessary software that the machine had accumulated. It wasn't the easiest installation I've done. My backup disks didn't do what I expected and I had to install from the Windows OEM disks shipped with the PC. First, Media Centre Edition 200x, and then an upgrade installation of Media Centre Edition 200y. Then all the MS patches and SP3. And it didn't go smoothly. Windows XP MCE is not mainstream so you cannot slipstream the service packs and create a Windows XP MCE SP3.  MCE's deviation also showed up once or twice with Microsoft Update moaning about version problems. Eventually, I was back where I'd started. Well, actually not, I had a fresh installation of Windows without my applications, which worked fine in VGA mode, but it still fell over when the NVidia drivers were invoked.

This time I turned to the forums. This always pisses me off. I hate being lured in to a forum where someone has asked my very question, only to find that that I'm expected to hand over my firstborn in return for the answer. I found nothing very conclusive - the usual "It worked for me after I sacrificed a goat", "I never have that sort of problem with my Apple", "Could be a power supply problem", "Cheap Viagra here", etc., etc.. I choose the "power supply" option. The last time I had a problem with a graphics card it was caused by an inadequate power supply, and although I thought the new graphics card would draw the same sort of power as the original one, I'm no expert. By now both I and the delivery services were back at work so I placed my order for a Rolls-Royce power supply from Ebuyer. 

The unboxing experience was wonderful. Just like a high-end handbag, the power supply was wrapped in a linen bag; the cables from the supply were wonderfully engineered, lots of them and all with lots of connectors. It is worth paying that bit extra. Except, it didn't solve my problem. In fact, I hadn't been completely confident when approaching the installation, one of my colleagues had made dark mutterings about "motherboard incompatibilities". Trawling the forums again, I did find a few other people had had issues with NVidia cards in some early Via PCIe motherboards. I started looking at new motherboards, wondering about whether I would be able to salvage my PC's processor. 

And then I came to my senses - be methodical. I had another PC in the house with a PCIe graphics board. So, I took my old, dead card and my new NVidia card with me and paid a visit to the other PC. First, I tried out the dead card - it was dead. Then I tried the new NVidia card - it worked. So evidence now favoured a motherboard issue and it was back to the first PC with the Radeon card from the second PC. It worked.

I guess it's now more than a month since the graphics card died and I'm nearly back to having everything working. The second PC has survived its graphics card transplant without too much problem. It took not much more than an hour to get things like the dual monitor setup working properly and the latest drivers installed. The Medion is working; I've still got some software to install but otherwise its fine.

So, for the benefit of posterity: 

There is an incompatibility between the Via P4M890 based motherboard in the Medion 8818 Media PC which means that an NVidia GeForce GT 430 will not work. However, an ASUS EAH3650 (Radeon HD 3650 GPU) does work.

Programmable Vodka Bottle

Thanks to Engadget for this one.

Vista Millienium Edition?

My friend Richard Taylor muses on his blog "It looks like Windows Vista could become the Windows ME of the 21st century". Well, there is a certain similarity; I paid a few pounds for a ME upgrade to 98 which I never used, and I've paid a few pounds for a Vista upgrade to XP MCE which I haven't used. I certainly see no compelling reason to move.

Divergence

I've written about why, although digital technology is converging, digital products should diverge. I've recently become interested in the Nokia N800 web-tablet. It's a small (think PSP) touch screen based computer which looks ideal as a portable web browser. It has bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, but no cellular connectivity; it is not a phone. A recent blog posting, "maybe your phone doesn't need to be smart" covers some of the good reasons why a bluetooth cell phone plus an N800 could be a really good combination.

My own analysis is that I want my cell phone to be small enough to carry with me at all times - in the pocket of my jeans. This means the phone must be small (thinner than my current Nokia 6822 which can unfold to reveal a qwerty keyboard); robust; work well as a phone(!); and have some non-phone functions (i-net, diary, ...) but it doesn't need to be very good at those things. The 6822 works just fine with the Google Mail Java app for instance. Ultimately, of course, the size of the phone will limit the screen size which ends up limiting its usefulness. I think carrying a second, larger device, with more functionality sounds just.

Of course, today the N800 seems to be lacking a key application, a diary which syncs with other things (Outlook, Google Calender). But I'm sure this will get fixed soon.

Palm and my Medion 8818

I can't sync my Palm (well Treo to tell thr truth) to my new PC. The Palm website helpfully says:

Please note, we provide no support for use of our software or for synchronization of our devices with these operating systems:

• Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
• Windows XP Media Center Edition
• Windows XP Professional x64
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Small Business Server 2003
• Windows NT Server
• Any Windows Terminal Server version
• Dual- or Multiple-CPU computers

I score twice - Windows XP Media Centre Edition running on a dual core. So what did Palm mess up so badly?

More Medion 8818 stuff

The Christmas break has been like the curate's egg as far as the new PC goes.

I successfully wrote my first DVDs - I discovered that my DVD player seems to read both +R and -R sucessfully.

However, I had more fun when it came to burning a CD from an ISO. This has caused me fun and games over the years; I do it infrequently and used to forget how to do it. Surely it's easy with Nero, I thought. But Nero didn't like trying to use a .cue file; it seemed like there was something missing from Nero, or whatever. I tried updating on-line and that didn't work - indeed Nero complained that it couldn't connect to the internet properly. (Subsequently I have decided that this was due to some behaviour of the Bullguard anti-malware. See below). So, I downloaded the newest Nero from the Nero website and installed it. The new version worked just fine but what should have been a really straighforward process took ages.

Then came the real problem. I was trying to add a collection of UK contour maps into my Garmin Mapsource installation. This requires editing the registry. To cut a very long story short, I ended up deciding that I'd messed things up so badly I'd better put the PC back into its delivery state and start again.

The recover procedure worked pretty well. I've now backed up the key recovery files onto DVDs, so I'm safer than I was. It's taken about a day to get things back to a pretty much full installation. I'm just missing my Garmin installation, which I've decided to leave until last. Nero caused some issues. The orginal installation worked fine but there does seem to be some problem with Nero and Bullguard; I ended up disabling the firewall while Nero was installing and then all went well.

In conclusion. Firstly, be very careful editting the registry (but you knew that). Secondly, Nero and Bullguard have a problem with their relationship. Thirdly, I was impressed by the reinstallation process that Medion supplied.

Now the PC is a bit more lived in

I recounted my early experience with my Aldi (Medion 8818) in a previous post. I've still not solved my Palm sync problem, but I have read that if I use an old version of Palm desktop it might work - we'll see.

Otherwise things are pretty good. I'm running with dual 19" monitors. The Nvidia set up is a little obscure for my liking and I've yet to work out how to configure things so I can switch between two screens and one large virtual screen easily. Anyhow, not a huge bother.

I've now got most of the software I use regularly loaded and running. Everything seems to run fine and the machine is much faster than I'm used to. And that's with Google desktop, MSN Messanger, etc. all running in the background by default.

I tried out the DVD buring software (CyberLink PowerDirector, PowerProducer, etc.) and it all seemed to work OK for very little effort. I've not tried Nero yet, but I'm sure I'll get round to it soon. I did, however, try out Microsoft MediaCenter - waste of disk space I suspect, but since I've not got any TV feed to the PC this judgement may be premature.

The only real complaint I have is that the wireless keyboard is rather particular about something. I'm not completely sure what yet, but from time-to-time it ceases to work as a keyboard; it works fine as a random substring generator though. Strangely the matching mouse seems fine.

Anyhow, very pleased so far.

New PC ups and downs

The reason I've not reviewed my passport holder thoroughly is that I have just bought a new PC. It's not just a PC, it's a "Multimedia Internet Entertainment PC". Actually, its a Medion 8818, which is a E6300 (core duo) powered machine with 1 Gbyte of RAM, a Lightscribe DVD writer, a DVD reader, TV tuner, some 256 Mbyte video card with HDI, DVI and VGA out. I also bought a new 19" monitor. Yes, Aldi did well out of me on Sunday. (For those of you not in the know, Aldi is a low-end supermarket chain that sometimes does amazing offers on expensive goods).

Anyhow, I've been busy clearing of the viruses that came installed (e.g. MS Office 60-day trial) and installing the essentials of life (Google Earth, Google Pack, Firefox, ...). However, I have a problem; when I sync my Palm to my new PC I get the blue screen of death! I've now spent about three or four hours looking into this problem - which has pissed me off no end as part of the reason for buying a ready built PC is so I didn't have to debug something I'd built. Anyhow, Microsoft pointed the finger at an NVidia driver problem (there is an obscure problem with the interaction between power management software, threading in the NVidia driver and dual core processors). I tried NVidia's new drivers and their suggestions without luck. Then I looked on the Palm site. Palm doesn't support Windows Media Centre. I don't know why, I don't care, but problem over as far as I am concerned. I was thinking of returning the PC but I think I'll have to ask Santa for a new PDA instead.