Bones
Code Helper 
Posts: 131
Bones said 0 great things
|
Post by Bones on Sept 28, 2012 12:39:16 GMT -8
This is a story of industrial espionage and how yesterday I was unwittingly drawn into it... My neighbor brought over a Dell Optiplex GX270 mini-tower yesterday morning and asked if I could figure out why it intermittently refused to boot and when it did boot would spontaneously shutdown as if someone had pulled the plug. Having some rare time on my hands and being the great guy I am I assured her it would be back in tip top shape but since it had been a few years since I even popped a computer case this adventure might take me some time, little did I know the Chinese had already preordained the outcome of my little adventure through industrial espionage!!! This is a story based on actual facts, can you figure it out given the clues so far? |
|
|
|
Post by Wormopolis on Sept 28, 2012 18:20:55 GMT -8
Is this a riddle?
|
|
Bones
Code Helper
Posts: 131
Bones said 0 great things
|
Post by Bones on Sept 28, 2012 18:48:43 GMT -8
If that is an administrative question asked in order to decide whether to move this to a more appropriate category such as entertainment, then no. If the question is asked in the vein of a curios reader then it is the relaying of a tale about technical sleuthing and the fairly surprising outcome that points directly back to China and international espionage. [plus John Cleese] |
|
|
|
Post by Wormopolis on Sept 28, 2012 21:00:59 GMT -8
yeah Im not nearly as smart as you. I wont ever get this so hopefully netmaster or WGS comes along and plays.
|
|
Bones
Code Helper
Posts: 131
Bones said 0 great things
|
Post by Bones on Sept 28, 2012 21:08:53 GMT -8
Self-deprecation can only go so far...
Plus it's a story not a game...
So the first thing I did was check the usual suspects given the spontaneous reboot symptoms, faulty supply, faulty ram, improperly seated PCI card, bad fan/heatsink, etc. I should note that this rebooting was also occurring in safemode and even a pure DOS4 environment so was definitely not virtual driver related.
To my surprise everything I tried checked OK leaving me without a suspect other than a general motherboard failure which I had only seen once before on a cheap PNY mobo.
|
|
|
|
Post by Wormopolis on Sept 28, 2012 23:28:59 GMT -8
over heating? are all the fans working normally?
|
|
Bones
Code Helper
Posts: 131
Bones said 0 great things
|
Post by Bones on Sept 29, 2012 6:37:09 GMT -8
over heating? are all the fans working normally? fan/heatsink check showed no such problem. So I began thinking outside the box, the machine had been sitting in the basement for a few years but absolutely nothing was wrong when it was placed in storage, the case was relatively clean but there were a few hairballs. I heard stories about these hairballs lodging between points that were supposed to be electrically isolated and providing a bridge for short circuiting. I am however dubious of this theory since hairballs are not generally conductive. In fact they are overwhelmingly more likely to act as insulators for both heat and electricity, but with no better idea I brought out the vacuum and gave it a thorough cleaning. Needless to say it was not this cleaning that fixed the problem but it was the cleaning that eventually led to the solution. By vacuuming I was forced to pay close attention to each discrete component to avoid potential damage and that is what led me to the discovery... (there's a hidden link in the first post between the word " yesterday I" and " was unwittingly" that sheds light) |
|
albert12
Not New Member
Posts: 6
albert12 said 0 great things
|
Post by albert12 on May 28, 2020 8:45:40 GMT -8
Im not nearly as smart as you.
|
|