bad luck

[mellowtigger]

I'm having a string of bad luck with technology. :(

My UPS finally gave out several months ago. Rather than purchase another environmentally UNfriendly battery backup, I chose instead to buy a simple surge suppressor. All went well until this holiday weekend when the kitten pounced after something and landed on the power button of the surge suppressor. The power flickered off/on, and I was no longer able to boot my computer. A Windows repair install was unable to fix the problem. I ran memtest (http://memtest.org/) for 2.5 hours before canceling and proceeding with a full Windows reinstall. That worked. I could boot into Windows 7 again. Now to reinstall all my software yet again.

Intending to avoid the same problem again, I took my UPS to BatteriesPlus to get the cells replaced. Once the tech had the UPS opened, however, he discovered that this old Belkin UPS apparently was intended as a disposable product. There was no easy way to replace the cells. I was watching him with it, and I agreed. Even after removing the circuit board, they allowed no room on the many attached wires for him to pull the board out of the way. It was going to take a long time to replace the cells, and he would need to charge me for time used on the replacement. So I gave up and had him just recycle the whole thing. I'll do online research later to find a good UPS replacement.

Meanwhile, my Windows 7 install froze up again. Not sure what happened, but I lost all of my BIOS settings after rebooting. I think I forgot one of the settings, though, because now Windows 7 is complaining about not having a USB device driver. I hope I didn't fry something on my motherboard during the power flicker.

Comments

Welcome to the club...

[otterlover01.livejournal.com]

Oh NOOO... Hope things will be running well asap on your side.

On this side I had a memory brain malfunction at San Francisco airport and forgot my laptop AND my visa + passport in one of the seats ...fortunately I recovered it all from the police two days later. i am presently on mainland Mexico spending the holidays with my folks, I brought my external hard-drive to show them some travel pics. It worked well for two days but suddenly it went into an unpleasant and worrysome tic-tac noise phase and stopped working (insert a big ARGH here...), fortunately, I made a full back-up one day before all the traveling. I am about to consult a cousin here -the family geek/nerd hybrid- about what to do...

Hope you are having the best possible holidays given the circumnstances anyway... Warmest hugs your way dear Terry,
Luis.

Re: Welcome to the club...

[mellowtigger]

(ARGH! While typing this reply, the kitten turned off my computer again. I discovered why. The on/off switch is placed next to two power status lights. I think she's pouncing at the lights but hitting the switch.)

A pc used by another renter in this house also died this weekend. I wonder if there was a weird electrical brownout problem that affected the pcs not connected to battery systems?

Yikes, I'd panic if I lost both a laptop and passport. :( It's good that you're back in possession of them. If the laptop noise was a result of hard drive thrashing (constant access of hard drive), then either the hard drive needs replacing or Windows needs to be reinstalled. If the noise was from a wire touching a cooling fan, then that wire may have been cut by fan blades and is causing overheating/shutdown of the laptop.

Re: Welcome to the club...

[otterlover01.livejournal.com]

Oh no, the drive that flunked is an PORTABLE/EXTERNAL hard drive that connects with the laptop via an USB port. Problem is the case is a sealed one -meaning builders did want to prevent one to open it oneself- have no reply from my geek cousin yet, btw. Thanks for the tips anyway Terry. Loveya, Luis.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

One rule of thumb is that if the UPS unit does NOT have a reasonably obvious hatch through which one can replace the battery - it's not intended to be replaceable. This can be difficult to determine through packaging, of course. For myself - after multiple bad experiences with other brands, I don't buy anything but APC these days. Even their small 350VA units have replaceable batteries, they make it fairly easy to order replacements and the replacement order generally includes recycling the old one. They've clearly faced up to the fact that sealed lead-acid batteries are a key component of their business and put in the effort to mitigate any environmental impact.

As for Win7's complaint - check the USB "mode" in the BIOS. Usually it's possible to "demote" the USB controller to a legacy mode for compatibility with older OSes and perhaps your motherboard defaults to that with the result that Win7 thinks it needs a different driver.

[mellowtigger]

That didn't help but turning off the USB 3.0 option did solve the problem. Apparently Windows 7 will find the driver during install, but the online update is unable to do it. Who knew?

Note to self: If any more BIOS recustomizations are in order, then remember to 1) define memory as DDR3/1600, 2) change SATA to AHCI, and 3) disable USB 3.0 (or experiment with it on during a Win7 install).

[litch.livejournal.com]

If I had spare money I'd love to try a flywheel ups

[mellowtigger]

Interesting. I don't remember reading about them before. Nice idea.
http://www.power-thru.com/22.html

Rotating black holes, baby. (Really, is there any other kind?) Angular momentum is where it's at.

:)

[otterlover01.livejournal.com]

Update: my cousin just messaged me and tells me that he can save my information and that he might be even able to fix the external drive, I am taking all the stuff to his office tomorrow. YAY... :)