Events 13

This page and its sub-pages are some kind of a blog, or in other words, it is an ever-growing personal computing-related set of pages with important current news and events (at least important in my opinion), therefore these pages contain current (at that time and so now past) important events, personal computing related "stories", like for example completely new things that I have discovered from the last website update, information about my current system state, un-installations, re-installations of my operating systems, any errors I am coping with, software updates and configuration instructions and similar. It was started on [ 19.2.2005 ] with the file-caching problem - that lead me to a complete un-install my Windows XP/Pro SP1 - and its basic description and solution. The solution was re-installing Windows, particularly downgrading to the non-SP version (but of course, before that I've tried almost all the possible solutions/work-arounds). And luckily back then the installation with "Unattended" parameters worked; if you're really interested then rather read the first opening entry for details below at the bottom of that page.

Well and for the last "events-entry" in year 2008 I have two things for you. One is as usual the website-code related and it's only that I moved this year's events pages (i.e. the ones under the "/other/events/" directory) under their own "/2008/" directory, and of course I also added a new "-- y-2008" sub-link to the "root-main" part of the website; same as in 2007 there were only two pages, "events13.html" (i.e. this one), and "events12.html", which is a small number compare to previous three years.

And the second thing is about the computer restarts that I am expeciencing (need to deal with) for no less than one year, and which I first mentioned in the "events-entry" from 06.12.2007 on "events10.html" page, and later also in the "twit" posted below on 23.11.2008. Anyway, here is the text from Further about the cause for my PC's restarts:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/270001926931 thread that I've opened on "Ars OpenForum" forum about this the same day, and which describes the problem (and attempted solutions to it) quite well.

This thread is a continuing of the Random restarts that are giving me a headache thread (which was itself also a sort of a continuing of this, and maybe also this one), in which I described the spontaneous and more or less random computer restarts (although in a few cases I can cause it intentionally, e.g. when I open a huge .pdf file, or a video clip or flash animation, also see below) restarts, and asked what might be the reason for them; I must stress once again that in case of these restarts there is no BSOD, scandisk is not scheduled (i.e. "dirty-flag" set for the system drive) after they occur, there is no entry in the Event Viewer etc.

So to repeat/summarize in one long sentence: in the linked thread we agreed that it's most probably my old PSU's (which fan was not working anymore for quite some time, and when I opened it I saw that things are melted inside), or maybe my graphic-card's (which has a fan for which I think it's also not working since it's spinning very badly, compare for instance to my case fan) fault, especially because I checked the hard-disk numerous times with chkdsk.exe (no bad sectors found; I speculated that it might be a bad sector that is accessed/attempted to be read from/written to, and that this is when/why the restart occurs) and its manufacturer's "diagnose/repair utility" (I speculated that, I would say that there might be a bad sector that is accessed (attempted to be read from/written to) only very rarely, and when it is the restart occurs), checked the RAM with Memtest86+ etc.

While the temperature is also not the cause because after cleaning the fans a few days ago (case's and CPU's one) and with the two new PSU's fans (also see two paragraphs below) the CPU's temperature is only 30-33 C (compare to 40-45 C before the cleaning) when working something on it (yeah, before I wrote this post when the PC was idle for half an hour or so it was even less, only 28 C), while after the cleaning the casing's temp. is around 20 C, mobo's around 25 C, and hard-disk's is now only 35 C (compare to >50 C before the cleaning and without the mentioned two new PSU's fans)

But now listen to this, as an addition to upgrading the graphic-card's drives (and the restarts were still occurring) I switched the then used (and better) nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 with my old ATI Rage128 PRO II graphic-card (but still, the restarts were still occurring), and I finally also replaced the PSU a few days ago, but guess what, to my big surprise the restarts are still occurring!! The only difference is maybe that compare to before (i.e. with the old PSU still in) they mostly occurred when I was working with the computer (made a specific action, like mentioned above, opened a .pdf file, launched a player playing some video etc.), now they occur even if I don't do anything special (and certainly nothing "stressful" for the computer), e.g. the restart occured twice like 5 minutes after launching F@H (btw. before, with the old PSU used, it never happened this way, I ran F@H without any problems), as far as I remember this was actually the first time ever that it occur this way (i.e. ehwn I was away from the PC)

So now I am asking you what other possible cause there might be for all this; maybe some bad part of motherboard, bad/dying CPU or some other bad/damaged component??!

-- shirker

While I also posted the Zamenjal sem še PSU, pa ni nic pomagalo:  http://tadej.sopca.com/2008/12/26/zamenjal-sem-se-psu-pa-ni-nic-pomagalo "blog-entry" on my Sopca blog about this; the previous two also related entries are Danasnja menjava graficne kartice itd.:  "http://tadej.sopca.com/2008/12/20/danasnja-menjava-graficne-kartice-itd, and Ali ima kdo kaksno graficno kartico odvec ?!:  http://tadej.sopca.com/2007/12/13/ali-ima-kdo-kaksno-graficno-kartico-odvec.

As you can see, now I know that neither my graphic-card (and it's probably not working fan), neither my old PSU (with melted internal parts because of the non working fan) were the cause of these spontaneous computer restarts. Of course, I eleminated RAM modules (by runnning "Memtest86+": http://www.memtest.org over the night), and hard-disk (I checked it numerous times with chkdsk.exe, and with its manufacturer's "diagnose/repair utility") as potential culprits. And so I suppose it must be some bad part of motherboard, or maybe a dying CPU (or some other bad/damaged component) that's the reason for all this mess.

17.12.2008

As I got used to, I will only let you know about the changes that I made to the website's code from the last "events-entry"; as usual, I've made quite a few fixes here and there (minor ones not worth being mentioned), however I need to mention that I've modified the website's "robots.txt" file.

Namely, from this form:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /sample/
User-agent: MSNBot
Disallow: /

I've changed it to this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /sample/

So as you can see, I removed the "User-agent: MSNBot" and "Disallow: /" lines, and left only "User-agent: *" and "Disallow: /sample/" ones.

04.12.2008

This is just an update describing the three website source-code related things. As first, I've once again changed the "expires" meta http-equiv element (namely, I changed it from "Wed, 31 December 2008 23:59:59 GMT" to "Thu, 31 January 2009 23:59:59 GMT") since the year 2009 is closing very quickly. /UPDATE: Well, that last part of previous sentence is meaningless since I confess that I was getting the purpuse of the mentioned meta http-equiv element completely wrong; see for instance the "META http-equiv expires": http://www.html-reference.com/META_httpequiv_expires.asp (or in full "HTML tag reference guide - <META http-equiv expires>") page on "HTML Reference" website. Then secondly, I also replaced the old urchin-based Google Analytics tracking code (they call it "Legacy Tracking Code (urchin.js)" on the respective page on "Google Analytics" website) with the new one called "New Tracking Code (ga.js)", which is supposed to provide me (heh well, not just me, but to users in general) with the access to various new features as they will become available.

And finally the last thing regarding the changes made to the website's source-code, I was totally desperately trying various ways to make that "Bookmark" button on "index.html" page to work in such a way, so that opening that bookmark-entry would not result in opening the bookmarked page in Firefox's sidebar. The opening post in the thread titled way to have window.sidebar.addPanel() ...: http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=89506 (by the way, I removed a part of the thread's title because it's way too long) on "CodingForums.com" forum nicely describes this exact problem, while the other such related threads are the Possible bug using this JS: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.feedback.firefox/browse_thread/thread/f45617c0b3d5c5a1 discussion on "Google Groups" (in particular, the "mozilla.feedback.firefox" section), but unfortunately so far nobody replied to it (and most probably won't since it's quite old), and a thread titled adding a bookmark using JS: http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122460 on "WebDeveloper" forum, however, for the last one I am not absolutely sure that it's about this exact issue. And futher about the things that I've tried to solve the problem: I've tried using "window.external.addPanel" instead of the default "window.sidebar.addPanel" (and many other things too), while here are two related Google searches: http://www.google.com/search?q=window.external.addPanel, and http://www.google.com/search?q=window.sidebar.addPanel (in my desperate attempts I even tried searching for: http://www.google.com/search?q=window.external.AddFavorite, which is the way, or rather the code, used to add "Favorites" in Microsoft's IE program), but unfortunately without success.

23.11.2008

There was no "events-entry" for more than two months now, although note that I update the website (i.e. I make various minor fixes and other changes to the code that are not worth mentioning) more all less all the time, but I do not write an "events-entry" each and every time. But again, since now there are two months from the last one, I am feeling obliged to write some stuff about a few other things that might be sort of related to the "computing nature" of this website. And yes, the only thing regarding this website worth mentioning is that I removed the (/UPDATE: Well, afterward the same day I rather replaced it with the one from "MyPagerank": http://www.mypagerank.net website) badge from "index.html" page that displays PR of this website provided by "UrlTrends": http://www.urltrends.com (well, it shows only the PR of the page into which its code is placed) since after the mentioned website was recently updated, it isn't working anymore. And well, the other thing is that with this "events-entry" I created a new page "events13.html".

As frist, as usual I've posted an entry now and then on my main slovenian Tadej: spletne objave: http://tadej.sopca.com blog (oh and by the way, this blog of mine had its 2nd birthday on 16th October, see the Ta blog ima danes svoj 2. rojstni dan:  http://tadej.sopca.com/2008/10/12/ta-blog-ima-danes-svoj-2-rojstni-dan "blog-entry"), and further, since pages on "Facebook": http://www.facebook.com are not causing those annoying restarts on my computer anymore, I'm much more active (than before) there for the last few days. By the way, I wrote a so-called "twit" on "Twitter": http://twitter.com (and here is a direct link to my personal Twitter / satyr: http://twitter.com/satyr page there) about this, and the link to this particular "twit" is this one: http://twitter.com/satyr/status/1006325723, and it reads like this:

Facebook's pages are not causing those strange PC restarts anymore, and so I'm much more active (than before) there for the last few days!!

While also, in October I had a interview for a job at "SOSED.si": http://www.sosed.si" (a company that provides computer repair/configuration and help) and it went very well. I also posted a "twit" about this, while the link to this one is here: http://twitter.com/satyr/status/953250908, again, the "twit" itself goes like this:

Today I had a interview for a job at SOSED.si, and IMO it went very well; I will soon provide you with more details (probably) on my blog!!

Finally, during this time I took the time to update both variants (the english Tadej Persic's website: http://tadejpersic.50webs.com one, and the slovenian Tadej Peršič stran: http://tadejpersic.50webs.org one) of my general personal navigational website, and I did that quite often. For instance, on both variants I changed the layout (moved some "legal" text to the top and bottom of each page), then I also moved the "bookmark:" with an icon thing below each page's title (the one in <h1> heading element) back to the row of buttons above where it was before. While separately, regarding only the english variant, I've changed the colour of Google AdSense's ads (in particular, I changed the "google_color_link" from "0000FF" to "000000", and "google_color_url" from "008000" to "FFFF00"), all this for the ads to better blend into the site, while on the slovenian variant I actually made quite drastic changes, or to be precise, I renamed multiple pages; namely, I changed "linkanje.html" to "povezave.html", "o-meni.html" and "o-strani.html" to "glede-mene.html" and "glede-strani.html", and finally "novice.html" to "novosti.html" (and of course, it was same with "novice-staro-1.html" that I renamed to "novosti-staro-1.html"), all this for the reason that now that variant (i.e. the lenght of words/pages) is more similar to the english variant. While secondly, I also finally figured out how to make the "Element Properties" window (see, the thing is that "<meta name="language"...", "<meta http-equiv="content-language"...", and "<meta http-equiv="language"..." all already had "...content="sl" />" value) that pops-up if you right-click on the page (I mean to click on some general area and not some specific element like an image, or a link) to show "Text language: Slovenian" instead of "Text language: English"..All I needed to do was to change <html xml:lang="en" lang="en" /> to <html xml:lang="sl" lang="sl" />.