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View Full Version : Ubuntu 10.10 tells the story when something is wrong.



irv
October 15th, 2010, 02:44 PM
I am a retired I.T. Guy and had a computer repair shop on the side for many years. I still have people calling me to fix there computers. My daughter works with a lady who has a older Dell laptop, an Inspiron 130, which the HD crashed on. It only had a 40 Gib drive in it and it just so happens I had one laying around so I told her I would put it in for her. She gave me her WinXP CD so I went to reinstall her OS on it. Now here is what happen.
WinXP would get so far and I would get the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). I also had a couple of other HD that fit her laptop so I tried them with the same results. Finely I grab my Linux 10.10 CD and installed it. No problem with the install, but when I ran Ubuntu for the first time it told me the HD was bad and might fail soon.
I found this information very useful compared to just getting a BSOD with the message to try the install again.
To make a long story short, I call her and told her I would have to get a new drive and she did not want to put any money into the old laptop and she decided to buy a new laptop. She gave me the old laptop for trying to fix it, so I order a bigger HD off ebay and will fix it up for one of my grandkids.And of course I will install Ubuntu 10.10 on it.

TBABill
October 15th, 2010, 03:26 PM
Cool story irv. I had a similar thing happen with 9.10. Got a free laptop out of helping someone determine their CD was fine but the HD was not. And it was not the notorius false "hd failing" notification from karmic that many encountered. This one did die soon after :) Cheap drive and I now have a perfectly operating laptop for about a $40 investment.

irv
October 15th, 2010, 05:22 PM
I never thought of it, but I could have booted into the OS from the Live CD to see if it was OK. I don't know if it would have told me anything seeing it was running off the CD and not the HD. I also have a utility disk to check systems but I didn't grab that either.
I got the 350 Gib HD today and just put it into the laptop. Now all I have to do is install the OS's. I am going to make it a dual boot system with a License copy of XP that came with the laptop and was registered to that computer. Then I am going to install Ubuntu 10.10 on it.

98cwitr
October 15th, 2010, 05:32 PM
10.10 also tells me my new SSD is failing :?

I dont trust the SMART data collection in Ubuntu

irv
October 15th, 2010, 05:45 PM
10.10 also tells me my new SSD is failing :?

I dont trust the SMART data collection in Ubuntu

That's interesting! But that old 40 Gib HD was failing.

TBABill
October 15th, 2010, 06:31 PM
Funny thing in Karmic was all the posts in the forums for the upper panel alert that their hard drive was failing. That was a bad bug because it caused a lot of panic and people were scrambling back into Windows to run diagnostics only to find out their hardware was fine. Your and my cases were definite hardware failure but I now take a cautionary approach to any disk issues reported by Ubuntu since thread after thread of reports ended up just being a bug.

Oxwivi
October 15th, 2010, 06:37 PM
My 80 GB HDD was giving me problems, and whenver I used 9.10 Live CD it warned me. And like it foretold, the HDD went down under soon with my brother's aggravating repairing attempts. However, 10.04 Live CD didn't respond to any error on the HDD, I wonder why.

earthpigg
October 15th, 2010, 07:29 PM
She gave me the old laptop for trying to fix it, so I order a bigger HD off ebay and will fix it up for one of my grandkids.And of course I will install Ubuntu 10.10 on it.

You could always grab a thumb drive and have it up-and-running right now.

KiwiNZ
October 15th, 2010, 07:31 PM
The stop error message in the Blue Screen would have told you what was wrong. That is what it is there for.

Canis familiaris
October 15th, 2010, 08:18 PM
^ More often than not that blue screen just shows for half a second and restarts. Not to mention the messages are cryptic (if it just freezes). :|

KiwiNZ
October 15th, 2010, 08:56 PM
^ More often than not that blue screen just shows for half a second and restarts. Not to mention the messages are cryptic (if it just freezes). :|

If you are a Techie you know where to find the dump file ;):rolleyes:](*,)

Also if you are a techie you SHOULD know what the e.g "Stop Code 0x000000A....... " mean or now where to look them up.

irv
October 15th, 2010, 10:14 PM
I never thought of it, but I could have booted into the OS from the Live CD to see if it was OK. I don't know if it would have told me anything seeing it was running off the CD and not the HD. I also have a utility disk to check systems but I didn't grab that either.
I got the 350 Gib HD today and just put it into the laptop. Now all I have to do is install the OS's. I am going to make it a dual boot system with a License copy of XP that came with the laptop and was registered to that computer. Then I am going to install Ubuntu 10.10 on it.

I use the entire drive and install 10.10 on it. I setup a 148 Gib partition for the /home and 149 Gib for Ubuntu OS and 4 Gib for the swap partition. Loaded all the CodeC's a few more Software packages and it up and running. It is giving me one other error: "Battery is only running at 32.1%" I know it needs a new battery but it will work just fine on the power supply for now.

smellyman
October 15th, 2010, 10:26 PM
If you are a Techie you know where to find the dump file ;):rolleyes:](*,)

Also if you are a techie you SHOULD know what the e.g "Stop Code 0x000000A....... " mean or now where to look them up.

It's easy to fix...:) Stop 0xA (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314063)

Chasing down stop errors can be like chasing your tail with no end in sight

NCLI
October 15th, 2010, 11:41 PM
I am a retired I.T. Guy and had a computer repair shop on the side for many years. I still have people calling me to fix there computers. My daughter works with a lady who has a older Dell laptop, an Inspiron 130, which the HD crashed on. It only had a 40 Gib drive in it and it just so happens I had one laying around so I told her I would put it in for her. She gave me her WinXP CD so I went to reinstall her OS on it. Now here is what happen.
WinXP would get so far and I would get the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). I also had a couple of other HD that fit her laptop so I tried them with the same results. Finely I grab my Linux 10.10 CD and installed it. No problem with the install, but when I ran Ubuntu for the first time it told me the HD was bad and might fail soon.
I found this information very useful compared to just getting a BSOD with the message to try the install again.
To make a long story short, I call her and told her I would have to get a new drive and she did not want to put any money into the old laptop and she decided to buy a new laptop. She gave me the old laptop for trying to fix it, so I order a bigger HD off ebay and will fix it up for one of my grandkids.And of course I will install Ubuntu 10.10 on it.
I'm not trying to do your job for you or anything, but I'd probably recommend installing 10.04, in order to get a longer release cycle and less upgrades for her.

10.10 also tells me my new SSD is failing :?

I dont trust the SMART data collection in Ubuntu

SMART is known to be a very reliable way of estimating drive health. You should probably RMA your SSD and get a new one.

Dustin2128
October 16th, 2010, 03:09 AM
If you are a Techie you know where to find the dump file ;):rolleyes:](*,)

Also if you are a techie you SHOULD know what the e.g Stop Code 0x000000A....... mean or now where to look them up.
Alright, the 'you should know' excuse comes off as very elitist and rude (no offense intended). I generally don't believe in over-simplification of computers, but should my computer give me a cryptic message for 2 seconds, force me to search for a dump file, then decode it or just tell me in simple english (or whatever language) that the drive is failing? To quote RMS, the 'priesthood of technology' in which only a few people know how things work is what's wrong with the technological world today.

Also, kinda off topic, but lucid informed me my disc drive was near failure upon laptop install almost 5 months ago. Guess what's still there...

sloggerkhan
October 16th, 2010, 03:20 AM
10.10 also tells me my new SSD is failing :?

I dont trust the SMART data collection in Ubuntu

Ubuntu isn't responsible for the SMART data, it just reads it.

KiwiNZ
October 16th, 2010, 04:33 AM
Alright, the 'you should know' excuse comes off as very elitist and rude (no offense intended). I generally don't believe in over-simplification of computers, but should my computer give me a cryptic message for 2 seconds, force me to search for a dump file, then decode it or just tell me in simple english (or whatever language) that the drive is failing? To quote RMS, the 'priesthood of technology' in which only a few people know how things work is what's wrong with the technological world today.

Also, kinda off topic, but lucid informed me my disc drive was near failure upon laptop install almost 5 months ago. Guess what's still there...

The OP's opening line has "I am a retired I.T. Guy and had a computer repair shop on the side for many years."

How in the name of jolly green apples is saying the an IT guy who by self admission had a repair shop should know this elitist and rude?

Khakilang
October 16th, 2010, 05:08 AM
For me, I not only use my eye to read error message, I also use my good ear to listen to some funny noise in the CPU. Like CPU fan whether it is slow or fast, beeping sound that say the RAM or the GPU failing, knocking sound from the hard disk and humming sound from the motherboard. I Sometime I even use my nose too, to smell whether there is something burning inside the computer. Lastly I will use my finger to run through those chipset to see whether the chips is too hot. Chips that are too hot tends to fail gradually. I got very good successful rate in this way.

beastrace91
October 16th, 2010, 05:16 AM
^ More often than not that blue screen just shows for half a second and restarts. Not to mention the messages are cryptic (if it just freezes). :|

But at the same time you can go back and see in the next boot what is wrong... Don't get me wrong Ubuntu > Windows. But they both said what was wrong with the system ;)

~Jeff

Dr. C
October 16th, 2010, 06:39 AM
The stop error message in the Blue Screen would have told you what was wrong. That is what it is there for.

This is very true and the information in the BSOD can be very useful troubleshoot the problem. Having said that Microsoft then makes a very dumb move and forces a reboot of the system to prevent the reading of the error message! Yes this can be disabled, but what exactly is the point of the reboot?