UK BOINC Team Forum

If any UBT members are planning on buying a nice new rig for Christmas, I would strongly suggest that they do NOT buy it from Mesh.
I bought my new top of the range rig in April, and have already had to replace the hard drive. It is now regularly crashing with blue screens, and I suspect it may be due to hard drive failure again.
Their technical support is a sick joke. I rang them on Friday. Their automated prompts led me to option 4 followed by option 2. I then started to explain my problems, but they said that I should have used option 4-1.
I redialled option 1 but they then said I should have dialled option 2! This happened no less than  5 times in a row, and I still had not got any sense out of them. At this point I hit the roof, and demanded that a superviser rang me. Amazingly, he did, but wasn`t very helpful.
Fortunately, the rig seems to have settled down for the moment, I guess I`ll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

Rick.

UBT - Rick Horn wrote:If any UBT members are planning on buying a nice new rig for Christmas, I would strongly suggest that they do NOT buy it from Mesh.
I bought my new top of the range rig in April, and have already had to replace the hard drive. It is now regularly crashing with blue screens, and I suspect it may be due to hard drive failure again.
Their technical support is a sick joke. I rang them on Friday. Their automated prompts led me to option 4 followed by option 2. I then started to explain my problems, but they said that I should have used option 4-1.
I redialled option 1 but they then said I should have dialled option 2! This happened no less than  5 times in a row, and I still had not got any sense out of them. At this point I hit the roof, and demanded that a superviser rang me. Amazingly, he did, but wasn`t very helpful.
Fortunately, the rig seems to have settled down for the moment, I guess I`ll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

Rick.

Hi Rick,

The PC "crashing with blue screens" can be caused by numerous things, such as:
BIOS settings incorrect
CPU running too hot, due to fan running too slow (or not working at all)
memory issues (too little, too slow)
graphics card issues
various USB items all plugged in at once
hdd errors
specific software drivers can cause this as well - hence the suggestion to remove any "extra" items

Obviously, if Mesh seem reticent to fix it, under warranty, then assuming you can't get it repaired/replaced easily, then I'd suggest:

1) check BIOS and set to default settings
2) check internal workings, making sure that fans are working
3) remove any superfluous "extra's" (just temporarily) that are plugged in
(this includes CDROMs, add-in cards, USB devices, etc). Just leave HDD, graphics card, keyboard, mouse and see how this goes for a few days.
4) See how much free space is on the HDD - if it's near to full, then Windows won't have enough swap space...try to archive off any older stuff (or any large files).


Report back anything you can, which might throw more light on the subject. XP and Vista have become a lot more reliable (compared to the old days of Win 9x, which crashed almost everyday), so you should find the cause fairly simply.

Hope this helps,

regards

Tim

Thanks for your advice, Tim.
I haven`t added any software recently, and the hard drive has over 250 GB of free space.
It hasn`t crashed for over 24 hours, so I hope it may have rectified itself.
On the basis  of "if it aint broke, don`t fix it", I think I`ll just see what happens.
Thanks again.

Regards, Rick.

Your symptoms sound very similar to the problems I had with my first computer. I mentioned to someone that the top of my case was hot to the touch and was told that that was almost certainly the problem (I had no idea how hot a computer was supposed to run!)

The computer was located in the bottom of a computer desk, surrounded on two sides by chipboard and at the rear by a hardboard backing (I had cut a 2" square out of the backing for the cables)

My simple solution was to remove the back of the computer desk completely and pulled the desk away from the wall by a good 8". It turned out that the fans were working OK, but there was no fresh air circulating round the back of the case.

Hope this helps

I don`t think this is the problem in my case. My rig sits on my desktop and feels cold to the touch.
I still haven`t decided what the problem was, but it has behaved itself impeccably for the last couple of days or so. Maybe it`s sorted itself out.
I hope so!
Thanks for your suggestion and help though, Melter.


Regards, Rick

No probs, Rick

It just seems a long time for it to 'settle down', from April, especially after a new HDD already? Hope you don't have any more problems with it!

Sadly, it crashed big time last night. I left the rig off overnight, and so far, it`s OK today.
I think it could be a problem with some software, but I think it might take a long time for me to track it down with my limited IT skills.
I`ll probably go through Tim`s tips.

Rick.

Hi Rick

All the points Tim made are valid, I'd just add to remove all but 1 stick of memory until you can narrow it down.

hope you sort it mate

Update: Just got a strange effect with IE. I was looking at UBT Forum, when I got 19 copies of the page at once!!!
Anyone know why this has happened, and is this likely to be the root of my problems?

Rick.

Hi Rick, I too had the same problem with IE, it seems just like a pop up that launches and loads of IE windows? I think mine was due to malware? So I loaded Much quicker  to load pages etc and downloads.

Timby wrote:Hi Rick, I too had the same problem with IE, it seems just like a pop up that launches and loads of IE windows? I think mine was due to malware? So I loaded Much quicker  to load pages etc and downloads.

I use Firefox and like it a lot. Unfortunately,when I`m on UBT forum, I can`t post with it as there is no "submit" box. I can`t understand why. I think I may have inadvertantly changed the settings.

Rick.

Temujin wrote:Hi Rick

All the points Tim made are valid, I'd just add to remove all but 1 stick of memory until you can narrow it down.

hope you sort it mate

Mesh Tech Support have sent me an application, "memtest", which tests your RAM. I used it, but it didn`t throw up any errors.

Regards, Rick.

UBT - Rick Horn wrote:I use Firefox and like it a lot. Unfortunately,when I`m on UBT forum, I can`t post with it as there is no "submit" box. I can`t understand why. I think I may have inadvertantly changed the settings.

Rick.

Hi Rick,

I use FF on the forum and everything works just fine for me....

Have you got any "Add-ons" installed ? One very good add-on is NoScript, which prevents certain rogue activities going on. However, NoScript, can prevent certain things happening, so you need to add certain domain names, (such as "http://forum.ukboincteam.com") to the "Tools > Add-ons> NoScript > Options > Whitelist".

regards

Tim

Thanks again Tim.
I`ll try that out.

Regards, Rick.

It is now over 48 hours since my errant pc has crashed or frozen, and it appears to have behaved  itself completely.
Many thanks to all who have tried to help, especially Tim.

Regards, Rick.

UBT - Rick Horn wrote:It is now over 48 hours since my errant pc has crashed or frozen, and it appears to have behaved  itself completely.
Many thanks to all who have tried to help, especially Tim.

Regards, Rick.

Aw, shucks......made me feel

Main thing though - it's working OK now.

(Just thought - if it's been crunching on BOINC as well as doing some other stuff, it could easily be "over-worked"...has it been crunching any particularly  "intensive" WUs (like CPDN ??).

regards

Tim

UBT - Timbo wrote:

UBT - Rick Horn wrote:It is now over 48 hours since my errant pc has crashed or frozen, and it appears to have behaved  itself completely.
Many thanks to all who have tried to help, especially Tim.

Regards, Rick.

Aw, shucks......made me feel

Main thing though - it's working OK now.

(Just thought - if it's been crunching on BOINC as well as doing some other stuff, it could easily be "over-worked"...has it been crunching any particularly  "intensive" WUs (like CPDN ??).

regards

Tim

It`s only been crunching Cosmology for the last few weeks.
I also spoke too soon, as it crashed again this afternoon.
At least it isn`t crashing as often, which is something I suppose!

Regards, Rick.

Update:
My PC problems appear to have been solved (for now).
It turned out to be a faulty memory chip.
A Mesh technician installed a new chip on Tuesday, and so far, all is well.
But stay tuned folks, I`m sure it won`t be long before something else breaks down.

Rick.

Well, I was right!
It worked for just one week, now it`s crashed again with the same error code as the last time.
Mesh say that I need a new mother board, and possibly yet another set of memory chips.
I`m just glad it`s still under warranty.
Now are you sure you want that new rig you were promising yourself to be a Mesh one?

I used internet explorer today and also got more then 19 windows popup (more like 60+!) I thought i had malware and spent a good few hours scanning my system with everything i got. I ended up logging off and back on and that fixed it. Must have been a website problem! No malware or anything of the kind was found.

Also i think the best computers are probably the ones you can build yourself!

Do you think Douglas Adams might have a Mesh computer???

Rick.

Defiantly!