PC Problems Aplenty

mood: tired
music: crickets, frogs, and other night sounds

This will be a long post of woe and joy and more woe and more joy and... Well, you get the picture.

For quite awhile now, we've wanted a 2nd computer in the house. When Dawn and I were the only computer users, it wasn't too big of a deal to share the single PC. When Lando started using the computer (to play online Flash games), getting computer time became a bit too difficult. Pretty much anytime one of us would get on the PC, Lando would very quickly run over and declare that he needed to "do some work" (as he put it) on the PC.

So recently we ordered a laptop from Dell. Nothing too fancy, since all it would really need to do is access the Internet.

New Laptop

It arrived at 7:30 in the morning (!) on Saturday, March 28. Oh, joy!

I setup the new laptop and quickly configured it to work with our wireless network. All was good -- except it would frequently drop its network connection. Very frequently. Well, our Tivo is connected to our wireless network as well, and we had been noticing recently that it seemed to frequently lose its connection. Perhaps our wireless router was going bad? Oh, woe!

We decided to get a new wireless router from Best Buy. They're not all that expensive, and the newer routers support 802.11n, which is supposedly less prone to dropping connections.

Of course, if we just connected our Tivo via a wired network connection (rather than wireless), dropped connections wouldn't be an issue for it, plus it would presumably be faster. However, it turns out that the Tivo Series 2 doesn't have an ethernet connection, just the USB-based wireless. Of course, the newer Tivos do have ethernet connections. Hmm....

We'd been wanting a new Tivo for awhile now (well, ever since our old TV died and we replaced it with one that could handle HD). So we decided to give in and buy a Tivo HD XL while we were at Best Buy.

We already had a wired connection from our router in the family room to our new BluRay player (which we bought shortly after getting the new TV) in the living room. Rather than run another 30-40 feet of ethernet cable to connect the new Tivo, it would be easier to just buy a network switch. That would allow us to run one line from the router in the family room to the switch in the living room, then run short lines from the switch to the BluRay player, the new Tivo, and (someday) the Wii (which we also bought shortly after getting the new TV -- do you see a pattern here?).

So that afternoon we went to Best Buy and bought a router, a switch, and a Tivo HD XL. Oh, joy!

That night, our desktop PC died. Oh, woe!

Troubleshooting the Old PC

I wasn't too concerned at first. When I turned the PC on, the fan would come on, as would the internal LED lights in the case (woot!), but absolutely nothing would appear on the screen. I figured it was probably a bad video card.

The next day (Sunday, March 29) , I borrowed an old video card from Eric, as well as a power supply tester. I figured I would either verify that the video card was the problem, or I would test the power supply and find that it was the problem. I replaced the video card, then realized that it didn't have a DVI (digital LCD) connector -- analog only! Oh, woe! Luckily, I had an old CRT in the garage. Oh, joy! Unfortunately, it weighs about half a ton. Oh, woe! However, I lugged it into the house, plunked it down on the computer desk, hooked it up, and fired up the PC.

Still nothing on the screen. Oh, woe! Again!

Well, then that meant it was probably the power supply. I disconnected the power cable from the motherboard and plugged it into the tester. No lights. That means a dead power supply, right? Well, actually, that was the 20-pin connector. There was also a 24-pin connector going into the motherboard. I tested that one -- all lights green! So... What did that mean?

Well, I could order a replacement power supply from Dell ($153 plus shipping and taxes), wait for it to arrive, then swap it in for the old power supply (which isn't all that easy) and see whether that fixed the problem. If it didn't, then I would still be without a PC. *sigh*

Our "old" PC wasn't THAT old -- about 2 1/2 years. It was starting to feel sluggish when playing Sims 2, but it wasn't slow enough that I could justify buying a new PC. Except our old PC was dead. And the signs seemed to indicate that it was REALLY dead. It wouldn't even generate a diagnostic *beep* when I tried booting the system with the memory cards removed and all of the drives disconnected. Could it be a dead CPU?

Well, I couldn't justify buying a new PC if our old PC still worked, but it was looking like our old PC was never going to work again, so I figured we could justify buying a new PC in that case.

So on April 2 we ordered a new PC from Dell. Not the top of the line, and about half the cost of our old PC, but with more memory, more disk space, and a faster CPU. It even had a BluRay disc burner!

Second Thoughts

After ordering the new PC, I began to think more about what would be involved in transferring our files from the old PC. The hard drives were presumably fine, so all we would really need to do is remove them from the old PC and install them in the new PC. Except....

When I bought the old PC, large drives were quite expensive. However, Dell had an option where you could have two 320 gigabyte drives in a RAID 0 configuration. ("What did he just say?") By that I mean, the PC would treat them as if they were a single 640 gigabyte drive. That means not having to deal with splitting things up between a C: drive and a D: drive, but it also can result in somewhat faster performance in some situations, because the PC can write to both drives simultaneously.

Unfortunately, the new PC wouldn't t know how to to configure the two drives as a single RAID 0 drive. And by themselves, the individual drives aren't readable. At best, it would be like getting every other letter from Genesis 1:1 "I h bgnigGdcetdteHaesadteErh." (Actually, you wouldn't even get that. The OS would see the drive as being unformatted.)

So then I began to think more seriously about the possibility that we would not be able to recover the data from those two 320 gigabyte drives. Luckily, the thousands of digital photos I've taken were on the 500 gigabyte drive, which I knew I would still be able to read. What was on the two 320 gigabyte drives?

Quicken data, for one thing. That's important, but we periodically take a backup to CD. Our most recent backup was a couple of months old, but we could restore from it, then download the more recent transactions from our bank. Therefore, I wasn't too concerned about that.

TurboTax data. Oh. We'd already filed our federal tax return long ago, but we hadn't yet filed our state tax return, because we were going to owe a little bit. And we hadn't printed a copy of our federal tax return. So... Well, we'd just have to do our federal taxes again (*sigh*), comparing the result to make sure we came up with the same answer, then use that data to file our state tax return.

Genealogy data. Ouch! I have a large amount of family tree data, which I began collecting back around 1976, when the Bicentennial and Roots got me interested in the topic. Did I have a backup anywhere? Um... Maybe. Was it very recent? Definitely not. *sigh*

REALL membership list. Oh no! I'm the chairman our the local skeptics group, the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL). Among the numerous REALL-related files I had on my PC was our membership list. Did I have a backup anywhere? Uh... Not really. Maybe some old printouts somewhere. Um... This is not good.

I decided I really needed to be able to recover data from those drives!

Plan B

"How could I get the data off of those drives? Well, if I could get the old PC working again, that would do it! Perhaps it was the power supply. After all, none of the lights lit up when I checked the 20-pin connector. Maybe that was the problem after all. $150 wasn't all that much money to pay to get back all of my data! Okay, I'll do it! I'll order a replacement power supply from Dell!"

Of course, it would have been better to have had this discussion with myself before I had ordered the new PC, but better late than never. Hopefully.

So on Sunday, April 5 we ordered a replacement power supply from Dell.

But what if the replacement power supply doesn't work? There's got to be some way to read data from a couple of RAID 0 drives, right? It turns out, there is! A company called Runtime Software creates a suite of software that handles numerous data recovery scenarios, including reading data from a couple of RAID 0 drives. All you have to do is pay them money. *sigh* It's not too terribly bad, however. Their RAID Recover Bundle (which includes RAID Reconstructor, GetDataBack for NTFS, and Captain Nemo) costs $179. *ouch* but not *OUCH!*

Boxes, Boxes, Boxes!

Everything arrived on Tuesday, April 7. Of course, I happened to have a REALL meeting that evening, so everything stayed in boxes until I returned that night. I then setup the new PC, connected it to the network, etc. Everything worked fine. (It's a very nice machine from Dell, not top-of-the-line, but still quite speedy.) It was too late to tackle replacing the power supply that night, so I left that for the next day and went to bed.

I took off Wednesday, April 8, so that I could work on taking care of our PC problems. I unboxed the replacement power supply and plugged it into the tester. For the 24-pin connector, all of the lights were green. For the 20-pin connector, none of the lights lit up -- exactly the same behavior as the old power supply! So that either meant that the new power supply was broken in just the same way as the old power supply (unlikely), or that the 20-pin connector is on a switched circuit and only comes on when it is needed, in which case the old power supply was probably not the problem. *sigh*

At that point I declared the old PC officially very dead and turned my attention to recovering the data from the old disk drives.

Getting the photos back was easy. All I had to do was remove the 500 gigabyte drive from the old PC and connect it in the new PC. *poof!* All of my photos were back!

Getting the other data back was a bit more of a challenge. I moved the two RAID drives into the new PC, then purchased and downloaded the RAID Recovery Bundle from Runtime Software. When I ran RAID Reconstructor, it showed me... nothing. No drives. Crap. Then I remembered something in the instructions about disabling User Account Control if you're running Vista, which I am. I did that, and now the two RAID drives were visible. Great! The software then analyzed the drives and figured out the parameters needed to read data from them. I then ran Captain Nemo, which allowed me to browse the drives just like Windows Explorer and copy data from them. Huzzah!

Long story slightly less long -- I got all of my data back!

Except...

Here it is Friday, April 17, and I'm still not 100% done. Why?

Quicken. Where the heck is our installation disk for this? We've no idea. We've got the data file sitting on the disk waiting for us, just as soon as we install the software! *sigh*

Sims 2. I have the installation disks for all of the expansions, including the final two expansions that I had just installed when the old PC died. What I don't seem to have is the installation disk for the original game! I have the box. I have the manual. I just don't have the disk. *sigh*

Photoshop Elements. I have the installation disk for this (hurray!), but I've been having trouble getting it to load the old catalog of photos. The photos are all present, but the catalog contains all of the additional information, like captions, tags, etc. I'm hopeful I'll be able to get it working eventually, however.

iTunes. I've got about 20 gigabytes of music, all ripped from CDs. Try telling iTunes that! iTunes doesn't like it when things change. You might be able to get your songs back, but it will have lost things like playlists, ratings, etc. Actually, we had lost all of this information just a few months ago. At that time, we bought and downloaded CopyTrans, which is software that allows you to copy everything from your iPod to iTunes. (Normally, you can copy to your iPod, but you can't copy from it.) Since we still had that software, I just used it to recover everything from my iPod. Problem solved! Except then, while attempting to sync everything back from iTunes to the iPod again, Something Went Wrong. My iPod's disk is now corrupted. *sigh* It's not as bad as it sounds. My iPod still works fine, but whenever I try to sync it with my PC, Vista tells me that its disk is corrupted and offers to fix it for me. When I tell Vista to do so, it then complains that it can't because the disk is in use by iTunes. When I tell iTunes to stop messing with the disk, it is no longer mounted and therefore can no longer be fixed by Vista. *sigh* I'll get that straightened out eventually.

This saga began on March 28. Here it is April 17 and four of the most-used bits of software on my PC still don't work 100% correctly! However, it could have been much worse, so I can't complain too much! (Okay, maybe I'm complaining just a little bit!)

Postscript

Oh, did I mention that our old laser printer won't work with Vista? So on top of everything else, we went out and bought a new laser printer. At least the new one is network-ready, so it connects directly to the network, rather than to an individual PC. That means if Dawn wants to print something, she won't have problems doing so if I'm in the middle of playing Sims 2 -- which I'll be doing just as soon as I can find the stupid disk!

(Reposted from my old LiveJournal blog)