November 1999 Meeting Report
by Howard L. Bonar
Secretary, Alaska Computer Society

The November 14, 1999 meeting of the Alaska Computer Society was held at its regular location at Providence Hospital starting at 7:10 pm.

Vice President Matt Childs opened the meeting with a review of the Alaska Computer Society, its programs, and activities. He introduced the board members and SIG leaders present.

Questions and Answers

One member experienced some sort of line surge on his cable modem which caused problems. He was advised to locate and replace the drivers for his modem.

Another member's Aptiva's DNS settings were getting changed after being logged on to the Internet. He was advised to turn off DNS server. The configuration of the his Internet connection is probably incorrect.

Request for information on training available for Adobe Photoshop LE. Check with Time Frame - they have classes. Also do a search on the Internet - there is a site that specializes in this sort of thing. Check at Adobe Systems Inc. web site at www.Adobe.com.

One user's modem disconnects him from the Internet after 5 minutes even when he is busy surfing whether using Internet Explorer or Netscape. Somewhere in his Internet configuration a timer is set to turn off after 5 minutes. It may be in the modem configuration. Also, Netscape version 4.61 had some serious troubles. If you have this one, upgrade to a later release.

Main Meeting

Howard Bonar explained the software evaluation program and announced that a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Premium would be the prize for the drawing at our next meeting - make sure you are there. It will be at the Anchorage Museum .

Door prizes for the evening were a shirt and a hat provided by 7X. Winning numbers were 981 and 988 (I missed getting the names of the winners.)

The Presentation

Hardware Trouble Shooting

Matt Schumacher is Systems Administrator for the 7X Group, an Anchorage based Internet, networking, and computer support company. Prior to joining 7X, he worked for other Alaska firms as systems administrator and as a computer technician. He has also done contract work for several large industrial firms. He has been using and working on computers for over 10 years.

WHAT MAKES IT A CHALLENGE

The typical computer is made up of five logical segments: the motherboard (main board); memory; a video adapter; a mass storage adapter; and the CPU (Central Processing Unit). The mother board holds most of the critical components including the CPU and memory, and the interfaces to the other devices. Some of these will be plug-in (daughter) boards.

In addition to the logical segments, there are input/outputs, mass storage units , and interfaces.

INTERFACES

There are four main types of interfaces being used in PCs:

• AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) is a bus specification that enables 3-D graphics to display quickly on ordinary personal computers.

• PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) provides a connection between the microprocessor and attached devices. It offers substantially higher data transfer rates than the traditional types.

• ISA is a standard bus (computer interconnection) architecture that was originally associated with the IBM AT motherboard. It was adopted by the clone makers and abandoned by IBM. It has been superceded by EISA (Enhanced ISA) and IBM's MCA. (Micro Channel Architecture)

• VESA VL Bus (Video Electronics Standards Association Local Bus). This is an interface between your computer and its expansion slots that supports 32-bit data flow at 50 Mhz.

MASS STORAGE DEVICES

There are two types of connections to the mass storage systems (data disks, i.e. floppies, hard drives, CD-ROMs, Zips, etc.) These are:

• The IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) system has two channels with primary and secondary units on each for a total of up to four devices. It provides the data path between the computer's motherboard data path or bus and the disk storage devices.

• The SCSI (Small Computer System Interface ) known colloquially as "scuzzy" can have up to 15 devices, each with its own identification, connected to a single card. This type has the most intelligence built in and therefore uses less CPU time for data transfers. Data transfer rates are much faster than IDE.

INPUT/OUTPUT

There are three main input/output systems in addition to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

• The USB - (Universal Serial Bus) can manage up to 127 devices.

• The standard Serial and parallel ports are usually called Comm 1 and Com 2 and LPT-1 and are used for connections to modems, printers, scanners, etc.

• NIC (Network Interface Card) makes the connection to the network which may be either Ethernet (2, 10, or 100BaseT) or Token Ring. There are procedures for trouble shooting each type.

IRQ - INTERRUPT REQUEST

To make all of these devices work together, there is a system for signaling the CPU when an action is requested. The IRQ value is an assigned channel or logical location where the computer can expect a particular device to interrupt it when the device needs service. It can be the most troublesome feature to deal with when installing new equipment in a computer.

To find the IRQ assignments in your Windows 95/98 computer, open the Control Panel, select the icon "Sytem", select the tab "Device Manager", and double click on the first item "Computer." It will display the first 16 IRQs assigned in your PC. You may find that not all of the numbers are assigned. You may be able to use the unassigned numbers with the device you are installing.

DMA (Direct Memory Access) is a process that allows data to be transferred to a specified location without going through the CPU. It permits sound to go directly to the speakers without using the CPU. Use of it by programs speeds up data transfers significantly.

I/O Address: This is a logical channel or port that a device uses to communicate with the main board or OS (Operating system). Setting the I/O (Input/Output) addresses of devices is handled in several ways.

Some devices and plug-in boards are set up using jumpers or dip switches. With these, you must open the case to reset them as the computer can't change them for you. Others, called "jumperless" cards, are set up by the installation software. Plug and Play ( sometimes called plug and pray) devices in windows 95+ allow all resource allocation to be handled by Windows. In theory you don't have to worry about a thing.

To further confuse the issue, some of these hardware resources are set by the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System ).

An excellent place to find more information about IRQs, DMA, addressing, and definitions of computer terms is at www.WhatIs.com.

COMMON HARDWARE PROBLEMS

There are two main types of computer problems.

• It was working fine then it just died or wouldn't come on the next time you turned it on.

• You just made a change in your PC and when you turned the computer back on it didn't work properly.

If it was working fine then quit, you may have a component failure. If you made some changes and it didn't work, there is a good chance that we have an OOPS situation.

With either kind, to get to the source of the problem you have to analyze the symptoms in order to figure out what has gone wrong. Listen to the sounds and watch the screen and front panel lights - and keep your nose peeled for the acrid smell of burning carbon or plastic.

THE MOST COMMON HARDWARE PROBLEM SYMPTOMS ARE:

• Does not POST ( Power-on Self Test) : When you first turn on your computer, the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) wakes up and does a "power-on self test" to make sure all the computer's components are operational. If everything is OK then it continues on to the boot program that will load the OS (Operating System) from the boot disk. Where it stops in the process will give you an idea of what is causing the problem. It should indicate any problems in: memory; storage devices; Input/output problems; video problems; power supply problems; and mother board failures. There are POST test cards available that can be plugged into your computer. The lights on the card will indicate which devices are being tested.

• Does not boot up the operating system. If the POST completed properly but the boot-up didn't occur, you have either a disk failure or a software failure. Try the "RESCUE DISK" that you made for this sort of emergency and see if it will boot from there. If it does, you may need to replace the boot software on your primary boot disk. If that didn't work, your boot disk drive may have failed and requires attention.

SO WHAT WENT WRONG?

The floppy drive light stays on: The floppy cable is on backwards.

The lights on the front of the case don't work: The cables connecting the lights to the motherboard are backwards

The machine doesn't see all of it's memory after installing additional modules. Make sure it is the right kind for your machine and is in matched pairs if your machine is a Pentium I or II using SIMMS. If it was working properly then failed, then check the memory with testing software or a memory checker. Most Computer service companies can test memory for a nominal fee if not for free.

The IDE hard Drive or CD is not detected. Each drive must be set to share as master or slave on each IDE channel. If there is only one drive, set it to default or cable select. Make sure that you have the hard drive or cdrom drive setup in the BIOS. The IDE cable may be plugged in backwards.

Check the CPU cooling fan. Overheating can cause all kinds of weird symptoms.

SOFTWARE PROBLEMS

When the screen freezes up or you get the bright blue screen and the "Fatal Error" message, it usually means that one or more of the following is happening. Two programs are trying to write to the same memory location. Two devices are trying to use the same IRQ. Software such as virus scanners or other programs that run all the time is conflicting with something else.

To resolve these issues, again check out the IRQs and addresses, and turn off all operating programs. You can then turn them back on one at a time to isolate which one is causing the problem. If that didn't fix it, then update all of the device drivers. And recheck the CPU fan to make sure the CPU is not overheating.

If Windows will not boot, remove all of the peripheral device cards from the machine. If it still doesn't boot, the problem is likely a software problem. If it does boot, the problem is likely hardware. Reinstall cards one at a time until you identify the bad one.

Start in safe mode. During the boot sequence, when it says "Starting Windows 95/98" press F8 to go to the selection menu for starting in the safe mode. In Control Panel, select System, then select each suspected interface device and turn it off. Reboot in the "Normal" mode. Turn the devices back on one at a time until you find the culprit.

Windows will not shutdown:

• Make sure there are no IRQ conflicts
• Remove then reinstall all of your hardware drivers

A frequent cure for many problems is to reinstall Windows

Windows will not detect a Plug and Play device. If a PnP device has been installed once and it didn't work and you deinstall it, all of the registry entries may not be deleted. When you try to install it a second time, Windows may decide it is already installed and refuse to do it again. To get past this impass you have to go into the register system and remove the device manually. This is a potentially risky action so you must protect yourself.

Before you do anything else, go to the C:\Windows directory and back up the two files "user.dat" and "system.dat" by copying them to a safe place. Once this is done, open Programs then select the MSDOS prompt. Type RegEdit and the program will start up.

Find the entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\BUS\DEV. BUS is the type of device i.e. EDI, SCSI, etc. DEV (device) is the name of the device you are concerned with. Delete this entry and close RegEdit. Reboot the machine and then try to install the device again.

If you really blew it, you can reboot in the DOS mode, find your saved files and replace the bad ones in the C:\Windows directory. (You did make a rescue disk didn't you?)

Another cure for Windows problems that many firms are turning to is to change over to Linux or BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) Unix.

Three good sources of information and components for computers are:

• http://www.WhatIs.com
• http://www.TomsHardware.com
• http://www.WinDrivers.com

The more you know, the less equipment needed.