Pete- Shut down this forum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gilchristfan]

:)

Since you've opened it, I've had 2 funky things happen.

1) I lost a hard drive (told you about that one). I've had them get damaged, but have one blow before, (you could see the burn in the circuit board on the HD).

2) Friday- been working on a brief for the 7th Circuit for a while, and was just about done. As I normally do, I was manually saving it every 15 minutes or so. Then, Friday afternoon, my latest version (in Word), disappeared, and I lost a day and a half of work. It reverted to a version from Wednesday, (missing about 14 pages plus a ton of revisions). It didn't appear in the previous versions, or recent documents, or an archived version, or temp documents. Nothing. It was like it never existed.

I had to spend Friday night and most of Saturday re-doing it. Odd thing was, on Saturday, it did it again, but I only lost about 1/2 hour. This time, I actually saved it as a separate document, but Word locked up and it didn't appear in the My Documents/casename folder. It was there before, but after Word came back on, it wasn't. Luckily, this time it appeared in the archived files, so I didn't lose that much.

Its gremlins, and its all your fault.

[nehemiah]

http://www.abisource.com/download/

microsoft word suxor.

[Merc]

gichristfan-
What kind of PC are you running? Having damage as you describe is something out of the ordinary. A weak or low grade PSU can cause damage like that and also cause all kinds of seemingly unrelated problems such as file corruption, random restarts and generally erratic behavior.

[35Pete]

gichristfan-
What kind of PC are you running? Having damage as you describe is something out of the ordinary. A weak or low grade PSU can cause damage like that and alos cause all kinds of seemingly unrelated problems such as file corruption, random restarts erratic behavior.

Bingo.

The most unreliable element in a PC. And it is the culprit for so many things going wrong.

[gilchristfan]

gichristfan-
What kind of PC are you running? Having damage as you describe is something out of the ordinary. A weak or low grade PSU can cause damage like that and also cause all kinds of seemingly unrelated problems such as file corruption, random restarts and generally erratic behavior.

That could be. When the HD fried, I took the entire unit from my workstation and started using a spare. (I wasn't going to take a chance putting another HD in a bad unit).

I also replaced the breakered power strip. The unit's about 5 years old, DTK brand, 1.2 MHz processor I think. I AM getting a message every so often that one of my USB ports is exceeding its power supply. (the one I use for my flash drive). I don't put that in unless necessary.

One thing I'm wondering about is the wiring in our building. Its probably 30-40 years old. We've been there about 8 months, but the secretary for another lawyer there said it can get funky at times.

Would it help to plug my surge protector into another surge protector, to add another layer of protection? I doubt anyone's going to re-wire the building, so that's not an option.

[gilchristfan]

http://www.abisource.com/download/

microsoft word suxor.

We used Word Perfect for years, now I'm kind of stuck with Word, because that's the format most courts use.

I'm not learning another WP program.

[35Pete]

That could be. When the HD fried, I took the entire unit from my workstation and started using a spare. (I wasn't going to take a chance putting another HD in a bad unit).

I also replaced the breakered power strip. The unit's about 5 years old, DTK brand, 1.2 MHz processor I think. I AM getting a message every so often that one of my USB ports is exceeding its power supply. (the one I use for my flash drive). I don't put that in unless necessary.

One thing I'm wondering about is the wiring in our building. Its probably 30-40 years old. We've been there about 8 months, but the secretary for another lawyer there said it can get funky at times.

Would it help to plug my surge protector into another surge protector, to add another layer of protection? I doubt anyone's going to re-wire the building, so that's not an option.


No. Not the surge protector. I've designed that stuff before believe it or not. It is passive and won't cause a surge.

Are all of your fans working? Is the power supply fan working? Does the power supply feel hot as hell when you are powered up?

That EMP last week can be brutal. There is something well known called electrical fatigue failure. Damage that does not cause immediate failure but delayed.

Think of your power supply as a bank account and each device as a monthly bill. The supply can only source so much current (or currency..).

The following devices are going to suck current:

Motherboard
CPU (the most continous current)
CD-ROM
Hard Drives
RAM
Video Card
Floppy Disk
Audio Card
NIC (Network Interface Card)
Modem Card
Any Other card.

Anything that has a motor in it requires something called inductive cranking current. Take a hard drive for example. Suppose it requires 6 watts while spinning. Well, to get it spinning it it may require for a short period of time 5x's the current. (That's why your car lights dim on a frigid day when cranking the starter)

Now a power supply has a bunch of lines on it called "rails". Each rail has a particular voltage associated with it. For the hard drives the +12V rail is used.

Now typically your hard drive will use only 5-15 watts. Since this is DC power then the wattage (power) equals P = V x I.

Or current (I) is I = P/V. For +12V 5-15 watts is .4 to 1.25 amps.
When cranking this could jump to 6.25 amps. Most stock supplies can source about 12 amps from the +12V peripheral (molex) rail. The molex connector is a wide, flat, 4-pin white connector.

If your power supply is dying then it will source less than 12 amps. When you exceed it's ability (surge current from spinning the drive) then the whole supply can go out of regulation (called droop) and your voltages all droop or slump. This can cause failures, software lockups, and reboots.

Try stripping the molex supply of everything but your operating system hard drive power supply and see if the issue goes away.

Then post here.

[Merc]

In addition to what Pete said I would advise you go to Best Buy or the like and get a high quality UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). APC makes some excellent models and they back them up. A surge Protector does nothing for your system other than protect from momentary surges in the line, such as from a lightning strike. An UPS will smooth out the power to your system from low quality power such as you describe. If the voltage drops it will raise it and vice versa, if it rises it will lower it, keeping the line current within an acceptable level for what is probably a low end power supply in your PC. The UPS will also act as a surge protector and when the power goes out in your building, the UPS will gracefully shut down your system, saving any work.

As for an APC UPS with power conditioning. Probably something in the 350-500 VA range would be fine (the higher the better there).

[35Pete]

That's a really good point Merc. In fact, I've been lazy about getting a UPS. I shouldn't be. A sudden loss of power is the #1 reason for an OS fault, particularly a screwed up registry.

Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that you are offering this as a solution but rather as a prudent and smart idea. A UPS won't solve his issue. Nevertheless it is essential.

Now for me to get off my ass and buy one. LOL

[nehemiah]

We used Word Perfect for years, now I'm kind of stuck with Word, because that's the format most courts use.

I'm not learning another WP program.it's reeeeeaaaaallllllly similar to word. although citations may be a bitch for you.

does word have the 'lawyer' plugin like wordperfect does?

they are switching over from WP to word at work. it's fun to watch the veins in a lawyers' head throb.

muhahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa

[Merc]

That's a really good point Merc. In fact, I've been lazy about getting a UPS. I shouldn't be. A sudden loss of power is the #1 reason for an OS fault, particularly a screwed up registry.

Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that you are offering this as a solution but rather as a prudent and smart idea. A UPS won't solve his issue. Nevertheless it is essential.

Now for me to get off my ass and buy one. LOL
No, merely as a protective measure to stop it from happening again. Power outages are one thing but the brownouts, with a less than stellar PSU, will kill you. I'll post my annual rant re. UPS below.

[Merc]

Merc's Annual UPS Lecture ;)
With summer weather comes brownouts , power surges and flat out loss of power including rolling blackouts. These can cause anything from loss of data to fried components depending on the problem.

To protect their expensive PCs, most folks buy the ubiquitous Surge Protector strip through which the line voltage is fed to the PC. With this piece of gear in place, most owners feel like they have done their bit to protect their PC and other components from voltage problems. The fallacy is that all they have protected their PC’s from is a power surge from something like lightning striking a power line. Also, many Surge Protectors are good for only one surge and are pretty much useless afterwards since their own electronics died taking the hit from the spike.

Something everyone should consider purchasing for their PC is an UPS or Uninterruptible Power Supply. An UPS is more than just a fancy surge protector (something they do infinitely better than a Wal-Mart Surge Protector) it is a power station, a line conditioner and a software controlled power manager for your system. It will not only eat power surges for breakfast, it will smooth out the voltage that is delivered to your PSU and other equipment thus ensuring that all those little, and big, brownouts that hit all summer long will never reach your PSU or other protected components.

An UPS will use its battery and/or internal electronics to keep 90 volt brownouts from effecting your system by boosting the incoming line voltage back up to 120 volts. On the flip side, it will limit those 130 volt surges, which go right by a surge protector, from reaching your system as well. If you lose power altogether the UPS really shines as it will use its battery to keep your system running so that the software can shut everything down gracefully or allow you do it manually, before the battery dies.

My favorite aspect of an UPS is the line or power conditioning function. In Virginia Beach I have seen 5 brownouts in 30 minutes, all of which would’ve knocked my PC off-line, get smoothed out by my UPS. Cable box died, TV went fuzzy, clocks started flashing midnight but the PC on UPS kept right on working as if nothing even happened. I even found a small UPS for my wireless router. This may seem like overkill but I took a hit one time that corrupted my system so badly that I had to reload windows. The PC was on a high end Surge Protector too. An UPS would’ve smoothed that out without my even noticing.

So what should you look for in an UPS. Obviously you need to cover, on battery, all those components you require in order to shut down gracefully during a blackout. A good rule of thumb is match your PSU output plus monitor (and modem if applicable) to the total watts the UPS can deliver. So if you have a 500 watt PSU, 25 watt monitor and 10 watt modem I’d look for a 500-550 watt UPS. Get a good brand name unit and make sure that it has enough surge protected and battery/surge protected sockets to cover all your gear (some advertise 7 sockets but beware, only two may be on battery, the rest are just surge protected). A replaceable battery is a necessity too. After that you can compare battery life and volt/amp delivery etc. as well as software and looks.

UPS's aren’t cheap. A 550 watt unit from APC will run $150 at the local big box store. Also, the software can be buggy and the things are HEAVY due to the battery. Are they worth it? IMHO I wouldn’t have a valuable piece of gear running on anything less but you’ll have to make that decision yourself. Just know that the first time you hear the UPS beep at you, you’ll be happy you invested the money. What is even nicer is when it beeps 4 more times in the following 30 minutes and you can finish that BF2 game without missing a kill. :D