Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)
A bizarre thing happened the other day... I've been using this Optiplex
GX-1 for about five years in my home office, and in the middle of the day
it went into a coma. No mouse action, no keyboard action... except if I
hit the Windows button (it's running NT 4.0) the task list would appear,
but then I couldn't select anything. I figured, one of the umpteen
applications running finally drained the last of the 512K RAM and it
needed to be rebooted - heck, with Windows you come to expect that kind of
thing daily.
Anyway, the fun part was when it restarted and said "No boot device
available". Powered off for a few minutes, tried again, same message. A
bootup with a Win98 floppy disk so I could run FDISK turned up no drives
installed.
I opened it up and put the "dead" drive into another computer, and it
worked fine. I also put a different drive in the GX-1 and the new drive
worked fine. Put the original drive back in the GX-1... no boot device
available.
The only difference between the test drive and the original drive was that
I used a different power connector, so I put the original drive on the
other power connector... and hallelujah, everything worked again.
Clearly, the power connector that the drive has been using these 5+ years
was at fault.
My question is, what could happen to a power connector in mid-operation
like that without also taking out anything else? It was unusually hot
that day, around 90 degrees, and being in Wyoming we don't have air
conditioning, but nothing felt excessively hot when I opened it up, and I
would have figured the drive itself would overheat, not the power
connector.
Oh well, it was a good reminder that I haven't backed up my irreplacable
files onto the Linux server in several weeks. I'm just glad I got a
second chance!
--
Peter B. Steiger
Cheyenne, WY
If you must reply by email, you can reach me by placing zeroes
where you see stars: wypbs_**3 at bornagain.com.
A bizarre thing happened the other day... I've been using this Optiplex
GX-1 for about five years in my home office, and in the middle of the day
it went into a coma. No mouse action, no keyboard action... except if I
hit the Windows button (it's running NT 4.0) the task list would appear,
but then I couldn't select anything. I figured, one of the umpteen
applications running finally drained the last of the 512K RAM and it
needed to be rebooted - heck, with Windows you come to expect that kind of
thing daily.
Anyway, the fun part was when it restarted and said "No boot device
available". Powered off for a few minutes, tried again, same message. A
bootup with a Win98 floppy disk so I could run FDISK turned up no drives
installed.
I opened it up and put the "dead" drive into another computer, and it
worked fine. I also put a different drive in the GX-1 and the new drive
worked fine. Put the original drive back in the GX-1... no boot device
available.
The only difference between the test drive and the original drive was that
I used a different power connector, so I put the original drive on the
other power connector... and hallelujah, everything worked again.
Clearly, the power connector that the drive has been using these 5+ years
was at fault.
My question is, what could happen to a power connector in mid-operation
like that without also taking out anything else? It was unusually hot
that day, around 90 degrees, and being in Wyoming we don't have air
conditioning, but nothing felt excessively hot when I opened it up, and I
would have figured the drive itself would overheat, not the power
connector.
Oh well, it was a good reminder that I haven't backed up my irreplacable
files onto the Linux server in several weeks. I'm just glad I got a
second chance!
--
Peter B. Steiger
Cheyenne, WY
If you must reply by email, you can reach me by placing zeroes
where you see stars: wypbs_**3 at bornagain.com.
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