Well i'm buggered...

If it isn't a kidney bean all of my own!

Yeah, my updates have been none existent recently, mainly because i had a couple of concurring blogs, and for some reason couldn't get my mobile device to log the uploads to this blog. Though that's mostly my own ineptitude.

We've known about this since early November but i've decided to wait until saying anything until now. That scans from the 6th Nov and the kidney bean is currently now around 18cm's all being well. Next scan is on wednesday afternoon, i'll probably upload piccys then! :)

For now, that'll do :)

Finally fixed!

Well it's taken a couple of weeks, but at last looseheads machine is back up and running in a stable state.
My original suggestion of replacing the PSU wasn't the solution unfortunately, so he's a little more out of pocket than intended, however it's a decent 480W PSU so if he does decide to upgrade it should be sufficient.
The source of the problem seems to have been a 5 year old IBM deskstar HDD. He was running on a 30GB HDD as for some reason i couldn't get the slave drive working alongside it originally. And it seems the issue is with the drive. However i still can't actually discover what the drive problem was... other than to describe the fault.

Intermittent "Freezing" at any point, when loading files, booting or basically doing things that accessed the HDD. Often the case "speaker" would let out a few warbles and beeps intermittently. However the strange thing is that sometimes the drive would run for anything between 1minute and 12 hours. That's partly why i thought it was a PSU issue, something voltage related.

I had the new drive up and running between 7pm Friday - 4pm Saturday afternoon without any issues. Hopefully that'll keep up and he wont have any further issues.

On a similar note, i'm thinking it's probably about time i formatted this machine again. It's been around 9 months since i got this machine up and running, and whilst i've not really noticed any significant performance drops there is some noticeable slowdown. To try and compensate for that i've been running spyware, registry and defrag utils on a weekly basis, which do appear to have improved the situation slightly.. but there's nothing quite like a fresh install to cheer a person up.

Perhaps i'll hold off until November or December and pick up one of the last dual core socket 939 chips, a slight upgrate to take me into the new year.. :) Not sure if the Dual core will make a big difference but at least it'll put me in a position whereby the next upgrade will have to be a big one (replacement gfx card for switch over to PCI-E) mobo, chip and ram. perhaps i'll go for an Intel chip next time, i've ben running an AMD variant for the last 6 years or so, i fancy a change.

Still having problems...

Well i'm off to Looseheads again tonight to see if i can finally fix this PC problem.

The PSU and a new HD arrived in the post yesterday. He's already installed the new PSU, which to all accounts is performing nicely, but unfortunately the PSU wasn't the cause of the problem.
In-fact from what he's told me the noises the machine is making would indicate that the problem is worse with the more stable power supply. Odd i think.
However i'll be over there tonight to replace the HDD and once again completely re-install windows.
I'm getting concerned now though.. he is suggesting the HDD is failing because of the noises made during disk access, but personally i've never heard "system" beeps when a HDD is going. In-fact when they've failed on me in the past i've never actually been able to get the machine to boot.

His problem is still the same, the PC will boot then run anything from 1 minute - 7 hours without a problem and then it'll freeze. Loose is suggesting that this is during "disk" access hence his blaming the HDD. However i've done disk checks on it and virus checks but i can't find a single issue. God knows, i'm just crossing my fingers the format and re-install works.
Otherwise it's going to be a case of replacing each item individually until it fires up properly, and frankly if we're going to do that he might aswell pick up something decent, my old Athlon XP 3000+ is looking tired next to some of the modern dual core stuff.

I'm looking at replacing my Opty 144 1800 with a Dual Core X2 4800+ (939) if i can put the money together to afford it. i figure it's easier to do that and remain on the AV8, than move over to a PCI express board which would probably necessitate new CPU/Mobo/gfx card/possibly RAM and ideally a pair of sata hdd's.
Though that's much more expensive than i can afford. much easier just to find £150 for a new chip as an upgrade than to completely replace the whole innards of the case. :/

Anyway fingers crossed i'll have loose's machine up, running and fixed tonight.

Homeworld

I was hunting through my bookshelves on sunday night (well more likely it was actually early monday morning) when i stumbled across a pile of games i'd completely forgotten i owned.
There were quite a few "classics" well in my opinion they are, and i thought over the next few weeks i'd go back and play through some of them again. (though some i don't think i actually bothered installing in the first place).

I've decided to install Homeworld first. It was a game i adored first time around, but i found it incredibly difficult to cope with the amount of micromanagement you had to do to keep a fleet going successfully. Also i have to admit that i was well and truly trounced by a friend online and sort of gave up on the multiplayer aspect quite early on.

Suprisingly considering this was a Windows 95/98 game it launched well on windows XP, and looked much better once i ramped the gfx res setting up to 1600x1200. It worked fine on my Geforce 6800GT.

Basic setting for the game is that of a race testing out their first hyperspace capable ship above their homeworld. In the middle of the hyperspace test an enemy fleet turns up and vaporises the planet and the building platform so no more ships can be built. You manage to rescue some cryogenic trays containing 100,000 of your people and unable to help anyone down below you begin a quest of sorts to find a new home planet and to repay those that destroyed your world with vengance.

Those of you old enough to remember the original (or possibly have seen the new series) of Battlestar Galactica might recognise the plot somewhat. However despite this Homeworld is actually a beautiful and absorbing game. The story arc is progressed as you "hyperspace between zones" and/or as your playing through each scenario. I have to say it sucked me in completely. I played for an hour on monday morning and went to bed at 2am, but spent the whole day following wishing i'd played slightly differently and about what i'd do next. Thus far this week alone i believe i've probably lost about 9 hours to this game.

Playing an RTS in 3d does appear a little difficult on the surface, but it takes little time to master the movement methods and you'll easilly get to grips with "grouping" ship types together and tactics/formations.

I can't believe how well this game has stood the test of time. In my personal opinion it's one of the best RTS games i've played and is pretty much completely unique, i'm just sad that relic only managed one expansion (cataclysm) and one follow up. If your out there relic, i know sierra own the rights but seriously! you have to release a new one! off the back of the last few days nostalgia i've even purchased Homeworld 2 which somehow wasn't in my collection already.

Well just got home..

Had another late night, went to visit Ryan to see if i could solve his PC problems... Of course as soon as i get there the machine was working completely fine. I sped up the Fan on the CPU heatsink in-case the machine had been overheating in the hot, stuffy weather but no matter what i did with the machine i couldn't get it to freeze as he was describing, and there was definately no bios beeping that he'd complained about.
Frankly i haven't the foggiest what was wrong with it.. though it wouldn't suprise me if the ex army PSU (600w) that he fitted or the lack of h/d space is what's causing the problem.
I gave up when i couldn't find anything wrong... updated his Antiviral program and set his brothers machine away defragging and checking for spyware.
Needless to say within a couple of hours of me getting home i'm told it's frozen again! i'm starting to think that Mr loosehead is extremely good at breaking things when i aint free to fix em... ;) you know i <3 you mate! lol

G'night