It's broke but it still works!

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 8:44 pm

Main PC has a 9800GT card. I got a 8800GT off Ebay a year ago to put in wifey's PC instead of a 8400. Cool! Both PCs can now do CUDA stuff.

On Saturday wifey's screen froze with weird pixelations. Turned PC off and on again, it worked for a minute or 2 then the same thing happened. Seems the 8800 gave up. Put the 8400 back in and all was well, but it's too slow for CUDA work - Ho hum.

Got to thinking that if it's the output line that's gone pear-shaped I wouldn't need that if I put it in the my main PC along with the 9800. In it goes, a little tweak in the NVidia setup - check BOINC and it works! In fact, as the 9800 is connected to a monitor and the 8800 isn't, the 8800 is actually doing Collatz about 40% quicker.

They've both been running for several hours now, temperatures steady and all seems okay!

Temujin · Post by **Temujin** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 9:08 pm

Nice one Mikee :thumbup:

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 5:31 pm

Part 2!

All's still working well as far as Graphics cards are concerned.

However...

Here's a problem for you to solve! I've solved it but I wonder if anyone would have suggested it if I had come here and asked. Consider it a little competition - no prizes though

Mrs. Mikee's PC has had a problem for a few months now. I only just got round to trying to find the cause since last week end. Finally cured it at 00:15 this morning!

So let's see if anyone can sus out the cause quicker than me!

The problem?

Every day at exactly 11:06 the PC would switch itself on whether in full shut down or sleep mode. I didn't want it to! So why did it do it?

So who's going to be the first to suggest the most likely 2 causes!

Joshrandom · Post by **Joshrandom** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 6:11 pm

Glad the graphics cards are all still working Mikee.

As for the strange goings on with Mrs Mikee's PC, well it sounds like the sort of issue that takes a lot of messing about before the all too obvious solution finally presents itself.

Hmm, my first guess would be that the BIOS is set to turn the computer on at 11.06 for some reason (I set one of mine to come on at 11.30 that way), but I kind of get the impression that the answer isn't really going to be quite as straight forward as that.

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 7:08 pm

Joshrandom wrote: Hmm, my first guess would be that the BIOS is set to turn the computer on at 11.06 for some reason (I set one of mine to come on at 11.30 that way), but I kind of get the impression that the answer isn't really going to be quite as straight forward as that.

You're right! It wasn't as quite straight forward as that! That was one of the most likely causes and it wasn't that!

(And it wasn't obvious - far from it as far as I was concerned anyway!)

Post by **Woodles** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:45 am

Was it set to check for program updates at that particular time?

Temujin · Post by **Temujin** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 10:38 am

UBT - Mikee wrote:Every day at exactly 11:06 the PC would switch itself on whether in full shut down or sleep mode. I didn't want it to!

The only thing I can think of is "Wake on Lan" set in the bios.
But that would also require a "Magic Packet" being sent from another machine and, as it's always at 11:06, that would need scheduling in some way.

Other than that, check scheduled tasks on the pc, some tasks can wake a machine up to run (ie windows media)

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 3:48 pm

Woodles wrote:Was it set to check for program updates at that particular time?

Now then we're getting close. As far as I was aware nothing was set other than normal stuff like Windows update and AVG.

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 3:53 pm

Temujin wrote:
UBT - Mikee wrote:Every day at exactly 11:06 the PC would switch itself on whether in full shut down or sleep mode. I didn't want it to!
The only thing I can think of is "Wake on Lan" set in the bios.
But that would also require a "Magic Packet" being sent from another machine and, as it's always at 11:06, that would need scheduling in some way.

That would have been the other most probable. I switched everything off in BIOS that would have switched it on. I even set the BIOS 'wake up' option to a date in the future hoping it just needed to be set to something. Wasn't that!

Other than that, check scheduled tasks on the pc, some tasks can wake a machine up to run (ie windows media)

Ah! Now how would I do that? What should I look for?

Temujin · Post by **Temujin** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 4:10 pm

UBT - Mikee wrote:
Other than that, check scheduled tasks on the pc, some tasks can wake a machine up to run (ie windows media)
Ah! Now how would I do that? What should I look for?

Does it have Windows Media Center?
If so it will update its EPG periodically and it can power up the pc to do it. So somewhere deep in the bowels of media centre there will be a schedule that wants disabling or re-timing.
I've no idea where it is though

PS
I thought you'd fixed it anyway?

Ben · Post by **Ben** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 7:05 pm

I was going to say... Is It the plug on an electronic timer? :lol:

Odd that Mikee. I'll be interested to see what the problem was and how it was fixed though. I must admit i thought it was to do with something like the Anti-Virus which may have scheduled scanning or updates.

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:12 pm

Temujin wrote:
UBT - Mikee wrote:
Other than that, check scheduled tasks on the pc, some tasks can wake a machine up to run (ie windows media)
Ah! Now how would I do that? What should I look for?
Does it have Windows Media Center?
If so it will update its EPG periodically and it can power up the pc to do it. So somewhere deep in the bowels of media centre there will be a schedule that wants disabling or re-timing.
I've no idea where it is though

Whoops wrong way! No media centre. However. it will probably be as close as you can get without being right!

PS
I thought you'd fixed it anyway?

Yeah fixed - just wondering how much quicker it might have been if I'd have asked here first.

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:17 pm

Ben wrote:I was going to say... Is It the plug on an electronic timer? :lol:

Odd that Mikee. I'll be interested to see what the problem was and how it was fixed though. I must admit i thought it was to do with something like the Anti-Virus which may have scheduled scanning or updates.

No. Nothing to do with that nor any other power spikes. The fault (or undesired function) was software related.

There's a Windows program which did something I didn't know it could do, everyone else who knows the program probably knows it could do this but I even forgot it existed, never mind knew what it is capable of!

madas91 · Post by **madas91** » Sat Oct 09, 2010 10:47 am

Wasn't the defrag scheduled to run at that time or similar was it?

Vague bells are ringing but i can't clear the cobwebs as quick as i used to

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:18 am

madas91 wrote:Wasn't the defrag scheduled to run at that time or similar was it?

Vague bells are ringing but i can't clear the cobwebs as quick as i used to

I reckon that's as close as anyone is gonna get. Though, after going through the motions, John was right. How Media Centre got enabled I haven't a clue as it's never been installed or run on this system.

I had totally forgot about the 'Task Scheduler' program. I've never used it. Windows 7 > (run) > task sceduler...

Deep in the bowels of that...

Expand 'task scheduler library > microsoft > windows > Media Centre. There's 'mcupdate_scheduled' Right click that > 'properties' then the 'conditions' tab. And, lo, there's 'Wake the computer to run this task' checked. I've just checked 'disable' instead.

Couple of things - why did this suddenly enable itself? More interrestingly though, I didn't know Windows could 'wake' a computer when it was switched off! I assume that Windows (or any other system) can shove something into the BIOS without your knowledge.

BIOS was the first place I looked and there was nothing I could see showing that something else was waking the computer.

So there you go, mystery solved - Windows was found 'Guilty' but skipped bail and is now on the run!

Joshrandom · Post by **Joshrandom** » Sat Oct 09, 2010 4:04 pm

UBT - Mikee wrote: I didn't know Windows could 'wake' a computer when it was switched off!

I didn't know Windows could do that either. :shock:
(might prove useful though)

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Thu Nov 04, 2010 7:34 pm

Well - the 9800 finally gave up tonight. I hoped I had a driver problem over the last few days (red vertical lines on the screen and a fault code 43 in 'device status') but after much trying it's the card. Now down to the 8800 which only works if there's NO GPU WUs running - so no GPU output from me for a while

Ben · Post by **Ben** » Thu Nov 04, 2010 8:13 pm

UBT - Mikee wrote:Well - the 9800 finally gave up tonight. I hoped I had a driver problem over the last few days (red vertical lines on the screen and a fault code 43 in 'device status') but after much trying it's the card. Now down to the 8800 which only works if there's NO GPU WUs running - so no GPU output from me for a while

Let's hope Mrs Mikee puts a brand new HD5970 and new PSU in Mr Mikee's christmas stocking! :lol: (Well... Maybe dream eh)

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Sat Nov 06, 2010 2:14 pm

I hate having a system that's not right - I also hate having to wait for things. I decided to get a cheap card just to get going again. There's very few shops round here so I was limited to Maplins and PCWorld. Decided to go ATI and get a HD5450. Hmmphf. Ended up with a HD5670 - darn displays making me buy something better and more expensive.

Upside is, compared to the 9800GT, it's nearly twice as fast, half the size, uses less power, quieter, runs 30 degrees cooler and gets nearly 3,000/hour from DNETC

So that's my main PC running again. Now to save up some pennies and get the HD5970! (I wish!)

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Sat Nov 06, 2010 5:43 pm

The 5970 may not be out of reach as you might think. With the 69XX coming out in December, the price of 5970s will come down, unfortunately maybe not as much as they could have with better competition from NVidia.

Another aspect to watch is AMD might put the 5970 EOL (End of Line) when they release a 6970, if they do, prices will drop like a stone as dealers dump stocks, and you'll start picking them up at a good price new or second hand. The price has already come down £200 since April this year.

Difficult to predict what AMD will do as the 5970 already takes out anything NVidia has on offer or in the future looking forward 12+ months. The 58XX & 59XX range has killed NVidia already, add 68XX & 69XX to the mix over the coming few weeks, and AMD have an embarassing number of routes to go depending on what their Corporate objective is, and NVidia have nothing to stop them. The coming 580 "launch" in a couple of weeks is a PR/Marketing spoiler exercise by NVidia, and is irrelevant to coming events, you will not see any 580 harware in any useful quantity until next year, probably Q2 2011 given NVidia's spin record these days.

If you stay "nimble" on your feet as they say, and watch AMD pricing/EOL moves/second hand prices etc carefully over the next few weeks, you'll get a good deal on some cards, difficult to say what, but the deals will be there and may fit what Santa can bring along.

Regards
Zy