May 2009
1 post
services don’t stop when instructed — what happened to a kernel able to force things to quit? Who’s the boss on the system?
April 2009
9 posts
1 tag
Outlook Choke/segfault/Restart
Double-clicking my 11:00 appt to edit/resched choked and killed Outlook, killing calendar, mail, and contacts. Let’s see what was preserved.
1 tag
Reboot: Sloth (Envy is Next)
15-20 seconds to close a dialog again. Sloooooooow. App switching is un-stellar, takes a long time. I’m reboot-happy today.
1 tag
Reboot due to Internal Confusion
The Dell has forgotten that clicking on a “close” box means to close an app, and selecting an app activates it. Reboot!
1 tag
Reboot: Only Way to Free Up Resources
Dell takes 15 seconds to close a dialog — that’s closing a dialog without making a change, saving content, or anything. Other systems can shutdown completely in 1/5 that time. Since there’s no method of completely dropping resident Segment Memory held by an app, there’s one action left: Reboot!
1 tag
Hang: Left alone too long
Had to reboot (as always, using a long-press on the power button) after I left the Dell alone for 20 min to make a call. Outlook, firefox were up, but the Dell had gone to standby while connected to power. No idea what caused it, but returning from standby hung before i had the keyboard up.
This might be related to my habit of hitting caps-lock to watch for a flickering light to tell me when...
1 tag
Another Reboot
This reboot was a case of letting the Dell sleep while connected to power (hibernate deactivated), then waking it, logging in, and have it never ever show signs of having a keyboard connected, although the trackpad works until it re-activates the bluetooth stack. I’m not sure why it re-activates, since the bluetooth mouse works fine until it (re)starts bluetooth. This kinda feels like when...
Quality == the opposite of rebooting
Outlook hang: Ctrl-1 and Ctrl-2 no longer change from mail to calendar, and magic left pane no longer updating. This was broken by scheduling a meeting — which is a rare (?) thing for a calendar app to do I guess.
random reboot — but the Dell guy yesterday improved the reboot speed, so it’s not so bad.
March 2009
28 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Outlook Choke/segfault/Restart
Yeah, I started logging these too.
1 tag
Dell Wifi Again
Another Dell moment: remove the W1510 driver (trashing configured wifi APs), re-scan for changes, re-install the W1510 driver, re-configure your AP, see if it comes up. One day, I’ll invent a system that records APs for re-use. That’ll be so cool, and no one’s thought of that yet.
Had to uninstall the wifi again, because I let the Dell sleep, and that often kills the wifi
1 tag
2 tags
Hung on Wakeup
Opened up laptop to find a ticketless Itinerary; hung. Screen visible after coming out of hibernation, but no response to mouse movement (trackpad or pointer) or keyboard. Reboot required.
random reboot. I think it was a sympathetic reboot, since my Mac was rebooting because one of the five updates this month required it.
No Failures -- but not for a Good Reason
No Dell failures for a few days — I haven’t used the Dell since 6pm Friday. Yesterday and today, I jockeyed email using my phone, which can communicate via IMAP (I like old, functional standards that the whole world talks). Unfortunately, I can only go so far without a calendar, and ours is an Outlook, so I had to power up the Dell.
Wish me luck!
Restart: MS Outlook Hang
Yup, Outlook choked again. I think we’re a bit impacted because the OS we’re using — WinXP — is actually unsupported except for the constant workarounds for security issues exploited by viruses… viri… A current OS would have the luxury of developing these virus fixes as integral parts of the OS, and would not be so labour-intensive to maintain, and have such...
GoToMeeting was installed and worked fine; suddenly, it’s not working, and I have to run it on-the-fly, and re-install if I want it to start faster. I already did this. Still works fine on Mac, so I’m watching the meeting over there while this one figures itself out.
MSOffice crashed twice. All edited/reviewing emails and meeting notes lost. I guess I need to use something reliable to take notes. I wonder if Netscape-4.76 is still around, it worked reliably.
so the touchpad is so crappy (not precise — if it was a mobile phone, the OEM would include a pen or stylus to overcome inaccuracy) … so I have this bag-on-the-side mouse as a workaround. Apparently Dell People just do this, and think nothing wrong with the habit (so why purchase the touchpad?). Well, the mouse has stopped responding, unless i “wake it up” with a random...
Of course, reboot mean re-fix the Wifi. It would be a useful enhancement if the wifi would remember the wifi passwords.
Reboot: Hibernation was Fatal
Let the Dell run out of power; it went into hibernation, then shut itself down, as one would expect. Unfortunately, it was fatal. All documents in-flight were lost in the forced reboot. Thanks.
Printing a two-page document took five minutes for Windows to re-install the driver for the printer, and needed the product CD. Good thing I had it handy. Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing to copy over the drivers to some place in the OS in case it’s needed later? YAY for Windows!
WTF? “Wifi Device Disconnected” and hard-drop of all network connections. All ongoing connections have to restart, and get back to where they were, plus the (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html) 15 minutes of lost time.
Internet Archive has the TCO spreadsheet: http://web.archive.org/web/20070102061544/http://www.thesecurityawarenesscompany.com/TCO/Winn’s TCO WinTel vs Mac.xls
TCO argument 2006: summary: http://www.mugcenter.com/oldsite/news/2005/092005/0929madashellfinale.html
TCO argument 2006: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/03/13/macs-still-cheaper-when-you-look-at-tco/ (by WinTel afficionado)
TCO argument: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/03/13/macs-still-cheaper-when-you-look-at-tco/
Wifi: Dell went to sleep, so it forgot its wifi config. Had to uninstall the 1510 WLAN, rescan for hardware changes, then reconfigure the exact same Wifi I’ve been using.
1 tag
Mouse Sleeping?
Because the Dell touchpad is quite useless, my coworkers tend to purchase a mouse (and often a keyboard) for the Dell. The mouse has a slight delay when I go to use it, it seems to sleep 1/2 second when left alone.
This isn’t the way the device simply doesn’t work during boot, when the bazillions of tray icons are being started; this is after the system is running, and I leave it...
1 tag
Reboot: installed something
Windows requires a reboot for everything; I installed something, it needed a reboot.
1 tag
Wifi: Dell 1510 WLAN vegetative
Wifi: forgets passwords and itself: Cannot connect to wifi because it drops all APs. Cannot add a “new” AP, the link is deactivated. workaround is to remove the device, re-scan for “new devices”, then configure that new wifi device. Takes 3-4 minutes.
1 tag
Reboot: language
I added support for Chinese, so that’s another reboot
1 tag
Reboot: vegetative
System’s vegetative; reboot!
1 tag
