Seagate SeaTools can help test other brands of drives

Today I needed to check the health of a drive whose manufacturer doesn't seem to distribute diagnostic software specifically for it. I would have looked over the SMART information with Speccy, but the free version is for home use only and I was working with a business. I had heard good things about Seagate's SeaTools, so I tried that. It was able to perform a handful of checks on the drive which were helpful.

Comcast Xfinity routers might not select the best channel automatically

It looks like most people in my apartment complex have a WiFi router in their apartment - there's at least 30 networks in range right now. When I arrived, it was virtually impossible to connect to, much less remain connected with, my network because of all the congestion. The router in my apartment is an Xfinity, which claims to be able to select an appropriate channel automatically. However, using a WiFi inspector app on my phone, I determined that there are many strong signals in the range my network broadcast in. I picked a different channel for the 5 GHz network, which still had several other networks but with weaker signals. I disabled the 2.4 GHz network entirely since connecting to any of the available channels was hopeless. This dramatically improved connectivity: I can now use WiFi normally from anywhere within the apartment.

Power supplies can test fine but still be bad

Today I witnessed an attempt to revive a dead machine, the one that failed suddenly several months ago. The original motherboard had died, so a new one was installed. Since there had also been concerns about the power supply, the new motherboard was first tested with a different computer's supply, resulting in a successful POST. When the machine's original power supply was tried, the CPU briefly spun up, but then went back to doing nothing. This was bizarre because both power supplies had previously tested as just fine. Evidently a power supply can provide the right voltages to a tester but still fail under real loads.

When wireless mice start scrolling very slowly

Recently, my wireless mouse decided to switch to an extremely slow scroll speed. Each roll would go about a tenth as far as it should, which made reading long pages rather inconvenient. Turning the mouse off and back on didn't do anything. Unplugging and replugging the USB dongle, however, did. The problem immediately went away and scroll speed returned to normal.

Unplugging extra devices might help the system boot

This morning after getting the main machine partially back up and running, I found that it again declined to boot properly. However, after unplugging both the 3.5mm headphones and the webcam, it passed POST and then came all the way up. It even allowed me to plug the headphones back in without causing a power failure, though I haven't tried the webcam yet. I'm quite sure there are PSU problems, but for now I can limp along by minimizing the power draw at POST time.

The official repair shop on campus apparently only services Apple devices (?), so I'll need to find some other place to get a new PSU acquired and installed.

Mostly back up and running

Last night, my computer suddenly stopped working. Today I fiddled with it some more, first by removing an old parallel port card that was installed quite a while back in an attempt to get an old printer working. After pulling that out, the system actually made a beep shortly after boot-up, and turned the screen on when I plugged in an HDMI cable! It wanted to run a disk check, so I let it, which only took a moment since it was only concerned about the EFI system partition. With excitement, I shut the machine back down to plug in all the rest of the peripherals, then brought it back up. It failed to boot (spun the disks a bit then reset itself) once or twice, but soon it came up to the logon screen. The keyboard didn't work at all despite Num Lock being lit, so I unplugged an unnecessary peripheral (the webcam) and rebooted. After another boot failure or two, I managed to get logged in. Everything now appears to be normal.

It's unclear how much of the fault lies with the parallel port card, but considering that it never accomplished anything other than blue-screening my computer, I decided to discard it. There are clearly remaining issues, though, which I am pretty certain are with the power supply. Alas, I have neither the tools nor the ability to make a definite diagnosis of which part of the PSU is problematic. For now, I'm trying to avoid strenuous workloads for the machine (no VMs for a while). Hopefully soon I'll be able to take the machine to someone more qualified to double-check that the PSU is indeed the problem and get a new one installed if so.

Sudden failure

Tonight I was firing up a virtual machine when the physical computer suddenly froze one screen, switched to mostly black on the other, power-cycled itself, and refused to boot. The hard drive is active for a little while, then all activity ceases; the monitors report "no signal" and no beeps are emitted. I tried various things for no improvement: rebooting again, holding down the power button with no power connected, inserting a bootable USB, and reseating the RAM.

I'm pretty sure the RAM is fine, since there are no beeps. The hard drives are probably OK as well; even if the OS one had completely died while the system was up, it should have shown a bugcheck upon detection or an error upon rebooting. There does not appear to be any physical damage to any components. Currently I suspect a failed graphics card or CPU. Alas, I have no VGA cable to test the integrated graphics, but the graphical artifacts shown on-screen at the first failure make me suspicious of the GPU. I'm concerned about the CPU because the computer seemed to feel slower as of late, though that might just be my getting used to the speed.

My next thing to try is to gently remove the graphics card to see if the boot process will continue with only the integrated graphics. I won't be able to see anything for lack of an appropriate cable, but I'll be able to tell from the hard drive activity. If the problem persists, the CPU is probably at fault. In any case, I'll be sharper at investigating things in the morning.

Correcting HP Color LaserJet color alignment problems with the HP Toolbox

My HP Color LaserJet CP1215 has had a color alignment problem for a while. When printing colors, the different primary colors would be printed offset from each other by a few millimeters, producing an unusual visual effect. Internet searching recommended the HP Toolbox, but all the download links for it no longer work. On older OSes, that program was installed with the printer driver (from the CD, maybe? I'm not sure).

I had a virtual machine around with Windows XP, so I connected the printer to that. Fortunately, the Toolbox was indeed installed. You can get to it by double-clicking the fuzzy printer icon in the notification area. In one of the sections (Troubleshooting, probably), there's a button at the bottom labeled Calibrate. Pressing that caused a recalibration, which lasted for several minutes, after which the problem was fixed.

Intel BIOS error 8110 or 8111

Today I was dealing with a server with an Intel BIOS that produced error 8111 when started. It continued to boot if a key was pressed, but a warning light came on. This Intel document lists the POST codes for their server motherboards. 8110 and 8111 mean that processor 1 or process 2 (respectively) reported an internal error, referred to as IERR. Apparently, that can also come from other devices, like memory.

I set the processor retesting option in the BIOS settings, rebooted, and the error went away. I conclude that my processors are not faulty; something else experienced a possibly-temporary problem.

When Bamboo tablets start having input lag

Sometimes, after several hibernate cycles, my Bamboo tablet starts lagging severely; mouse movements from the pen take a while to register with the computer. Unplugging and replugging it into the USB port does not help. The only thing that helps is to reboot the computer.

Removing dust from the device with a damp wipe may help prevent problems with it, but it looks like once a tablet gets into this state, only a full reboot will fix it. Not hibernating for so long may also help, as it's never happened to me after only one or two cycles.

Solving HP all-in-one's baffling Bluetooth problem

I recently dealt with a very peculiar problem. There was an HP Envy 23, an all-in-one, that had stopped connecting to Bluetooth devices. I tried updating all relevant drivers - Bluetooth, USB roots, chipset - and rebooting, and running troubleshooters, and changing settings, and nothing worked.

I had been using the touchscreen to work with it. To make sure that Windows hadn't suddenly decided to reject real mouse and keyboard input, I plugged in a USB mouse. Shockingly, everything started working again. I suspect this is because the Bluetooth emitter is connected internally via USB, and plugging in a new USB device somehow made Windows figure everything out.

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge drivers for the SD card slot

I realized when I inserted an SD card into my Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545 that no drivers were installed for the SD slot. Windows 8.1 was installed on the machine, and the physical computer had a sticker indicating that it was designed for Windows 8, so I was confused as to why Windows couldn't find drivers.

It turns out that Lenovo has labeled the driver as being compatible only with Windows 7. You can download it at their website. I've installed it on my laptop and it works fine, but I guess they never got around to updating the download page.

Strange Wi-Fi connection failures? Remove the battery

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545 that recently had a strange problem. Even though it was connected to a wireless network, it couldn't communicate with any other machines there. It couldn't get DHCP, but all other hosts on the network could. Windows network diagnostics did nothing; no amount of fiddling with the adapter helped.

A person I was working with had seen something like that before. He suggested that I fully power the machine off by unplugging it and removing its battery. Interestingly enough, that worked. I can't imagine how a network adapter could get so messed up, but this trick might be helpful on other models too.

Fixing Unbootable 15-Series HP Notebooks with Caps Lock Steady Blink

Yesterday I participated in the repair of an HP 15-R110dx notebook computer that refused to boot or do anything at all. When powered on, its Caps Lock key light blinked once every three or four seconds; the pattern wasn't described in any HP documentation that I could find.

It turns out that the CMOS state was corrupt or unusable in some way, so the CMOS battery needed a disconnect/reconnect cycle. Actually performing the repair was exceptionally difficult because the RAM and CMOS battery are under a host of important and inconvenient-to-remove parts, and not accessible from the bottom.

The general procedure to fix this problem is:

1. Remove the main battery and disconnect the power cable
2. Remove RAM and CMOS battery
3. Press the power button (discharges any extra energy)
4. Reinsert RAM and CMOS battery
5. Connect power cable and/or main battery
6. Reboot when prompted about CMOS corruption

Step 2 is written here as five simple words, but it is a challenge, as is reassembly. Disassembly goes like this:

1. Remove all screws from bottom panel
2. Remove the DVD drive
3. Remove the screws hidden under the DVD drive slot
4. Remove the screws hidden under the back two rubber feet
5. Pry the keyboard out and disconnect its cable
6. Pry the larger surrounding plastic piece off
• Be careful to remove the keyboard separately or you risk tearing the power button cable. (Guess who did that. Twice.)
7. Unscrew the metal plate and remove it
8. Unscrew the motherboard and tip it up toward the screen
• Screws for the motherboard are marked with white arrows.
9. Remove the RAM and CMOS battery on the underside of the motherboard.
• Yes, the RAM is on the underside of the motherboard, under all that other stuff. That is just appalling.

If you damaged the power cable in substep 6, you'll need to short across it when applying power for step 3. Fortunately, it's possible to solder it back together.

RubberWilbur's video guide to RAM replacement for these models was very helpful for the disassembly operation. For putting it back together, assembly is the reverse of disassembly.

Once everything is back together and powered, BIOS should come up with a message about CMOS corruption and a directive to press Enter. Press Enter (or just reboot) - CMOS will be reset and all will be good.

Power Cables and Data Cables from Different Computers

Today I needed to get some data off of an unbootable hard drive that was in a mount in a machine. Since I did not have a special screwdriver and the mount looked very difficult to work with, I decided I would just leave the drive where it was and connect cables from the real machine to it. The problem with that idea was that all the SATA power cables in the real machine were super short and could not reach.

So I carefully positioned the two machines so that the data cable would reach the hard drive from the bootable machine and connected a power cable from the unbootable machine to the drive. I powered on the unbootable machine first (I'm sure it got stuck in BIOS or something, no monitor was on it), then the bootable machine. The contraption worked - the drive was accessible and stayed online as long as I kept the old machine on.

This is also a good trick for situations where a motherboard is out of power cable slots.

When HP Laptops Fail to Boot and Blink the Caps Lock Key

I was recently asked to service an HP notebook/laptop that refused to do anything at all on boot - absolutely nothing would display on the screen and the hard drive did not spin up. One thing did happen: the Caps Lock key light blinked.

Some research turned up the fact that HP laptops use the Caps Lock key light to indicate problems that stop the boot process. Their troubleshooting document lists the codes and their meanings, which will almost certainly help in problem solving.

Dell PowerEdge Server Drive Setup

After getting the PowerEdge server's memory configuration correct, I was faced with another challenge: drive setup. Even though I put a drive into the SCSI array, the XenServer installer (on a CD) did not see any hard drives; a message printed by the BIOS (or maybe some other firmware component) before transferring control to any boot program indicated that no logical disks were configured. I was very confused, because I could see that the drive was connected - its power light was on.

It turns out that in addition to the standard BIOS setup utility, the server has a RAID controller setup utility/firmware as well. I looked in there, and it reported that it did see the physical drive, but that no virtual drives were configured. After a couple minutes of poking around in the integrated help articles, I discovered that the RAID controller only presents virtual views of the disks to the OS as physical drives. I created a new virtual drive that consisted of only the one physical drive, and everything was good. I might try out the hardware RAID capabilities later.

Dell PowerEdge Server RAM Setup

Today I had the opportunity to set up a Dell PowerEdge server. It seems to be a powerful machine - it has 12 RAM slots, 8 SCSI drive bays, 2 CPU slots, 2 Ethernet ports, 2 power inputs, and many noisy fans. (Aside: starting it up tripped the circuit breaker because it drew so much power.) The trickiest part of getting it up and running was getting the RAM arrangement correct.

It is a used server, and one of the RAM modules was bad. Fortunately, the boot process gives all sorts of information on hardware misconfigurations, so finding the bad module was easy. The slots are numbered from 1 to 12, and arranged into four groups of three, with a white slot as the first slot in the group. Rather than moving linearly, the numbering skips from one group to the next before moving to the next slot in each group. So, slot 2 is the first slot (the white one) in the second group, while slot 5 is the second slot in the first group (because slot 4 would be the first slot of the last group).

Then there are pairs of slots. Slot 1 is in a pair with slot 2, #3 with #4, et cetera. Slots in a pair must be filled with the same size and speed of RAM module, so having a module in slot 7 but not in slot 8 will cause the boot process to fail. Having a 1GB module in slot 1 but a 512MB module in slot 2 will also cause a boot fail.

Slots must be filled sequentially or BIOS will complain about some modules being "electrically isolated." Therefore, having slots 1 and 2 empty and 3 and 4 filled will cause a boot fail.

Finally, it is recommended - but not required - that every layer of 3 be either completely full or completely empty. BIOS will warn you if you have slots 1 through 6 full but 7 and up empty because slots 7 and 8 would complete the layer started by 4 and 5. I do not know how bad the performance hit is for such a misconfiguration.

DHCP on Monitorless Network Appliances

The Linksys LAPN600 I was waiting for arrived yesterday, and today I got to install and configure it. It is a wireless access point, a very fancy one by home user standards¹. I was connecting it to a medium/smallish-size network that has a DHCP server assigning addresses in a fairly wide range (Class C subnet).

Now, this device has a default IP address, but it will grab an address from DHCP if possible. That made finding the web configuration very difficult - it has no monitor or numeric display, so there's no way to see its IP². I didn't have a port scanner or network mapper on hand, so I started trying IP addresses in the DHCP range, one by one, in Chrome. I got tired of that after about 15 tries.

Using my very limited knowledge of VBScript, I threw together a script that opened a browser tab for every possible IP. I then hit the tab-close button like a madman until I saw the right login screen. That was kind of a neat trick, but it made me think that the whole DHCP-on-monitorless-devices thing is kind of a pain.

Wouldn't it be great if such devices had a miniature numeric display that told you its IP address? If that's too expensive, I would be fine with a little button that causes the power light to flash out the IP address in binary³, provided it did so slow enough that I could write the bits down. One could also imagine complicated "grab the network mask from DHCP and add a predefined host section to it" strategies.

Footnotes ("Fleex's Lab: now with footnotes!")

1. It supports Power-over-Ethernet (which I had never used before), 802.1X supplication, RADIUS authentication, VLANs, 8 SSIDs, and lots of other nice stuff.
2. I am aware that I could have checked the DHCP server's lease list. I did not have the password to that on hand; the person with access to that was not present. I am also aware that I could have plugged the device directly in to a computer and use its default IP. There was not a spare machine around with a free outlet space that I could see.
3. Probably in Morse code. Guessing the length of a modest zero run would be about as bad as manually trying IPs in web browsers.

Testing Hard Drives by Paging

I recently got a drive of uncertain quality that I needed to test. I had lots of time and also needed to test for infant mortality, so I decided to actually use it as a drive for a while. However, I don't really have anything that I want to keep on a separate drive, and I can't keep this drive forever.

So, I decided to move my system's page file to the tested drive. This can be done easily by opening the Virtual Memory dialog (under System Properties → Performance Options), unchecking "automatically manage paging file size for all drives", and configuring Windows to have no paging file on the OS drive but a system-managed paging file on the tested drive.

When the testing is complete, the pagefile can be moved back onto the main drive using the same dialog. If the drive dies - as it will pretty quickly if it's bad - then the compute can be booted into Safe Mode to move the pagefile back onto the main disk. Reboots are required after changing virtual memory settings.