T w e n t y S i d e d
We have actually had, like most of Texas, a lot of heavy storms and flooding the past week. It honestly hasn’t been that bad, although the rain has been heavier and longer-lasting. There were worse “storms” last month. But randomly yesterday morning the power went out for about two seconds. I didn’t have anything open on my computer, but of course it was shut down because it’s not on a battery backup. I didn’t come back to it until last night for other reasons. It started right up, but shut down about five or ten minutes later. No glitches or freezes; it was like the power just got turned off. Over the next hour and a half I tried different things. At first it seemed like the problem was associated with internet usage or possibly the (new) video card, because twice the shut-down happened pretty quick after I had started a YouTube video. I was planning on going to bed before too long, so while the laptop did some updates I figured I would just watch YouTube on the main computer. After those shut-downs, I wondered if the problem was the latest Firefox update (I’ve mentioned that I have a problem with how often those updates are occurring lately) so I did a Timeshift rollback to a few days ago. After doing this the computer booted but shut-down again pretty quick after booting. I decided the installation may be corrupt and pulled out a Live USB to use to test the ability of the computer to stay on outside of a normal boot.
It didn’t work. The computer either shut-down on accessing the USB, or while trying to boot the Live USB. It was getting where just trying to boot the computer in ANY way was failing. So, I turned off the computer and let it sit. After a few minutes, I noticed the USB receiver for my controller was on, which was odd because the controller itself was NOT. Also two of my external hard drives were showing constant light activity. I, as carefully as I could, shut down the external USB hub. Because it’s powered externally, it took a few minutes for the USB drives to completely stop and power down. Later I turned the hub back on, and the USB receiver for the controller came on. That’s not too odd, actually; everything gets a shot of power when the hub comes on, but it stayed on. And the two (but not all three) USB hard drives started doing the light, constant activity again. So I shut it all down again, and left it overnight.
I’m old enough now, and have been through enough **** in my life, that when something suddenly goes south I just finish my water and sleep on it. This morning I had some other family issues to help with, so I didn’t get back to the computer until Sunday afternoon. I had been working on writing up Lara Croft Go, an interesting adaptation of the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft games for mobile devices (and PC’s through Steam). That’s the main reason I still had a controller plugged in. But, this time I left the controller’s receiver out; then booted up the computer. It went to the Linux Mint login, and I left it for an hour. It stayed running, so I logged in. And then left it for an hour. Then I started up Bitwarden…and left it for an hour. All good so far. Then I loaded ProtonVPN (I know I can do a VPN through the shell, I just like how Proton works, and I’m used to it) and thirty minutes later I loaded my USB input remapper program. It’s called InputRemapper (picture a mind being blown right now. You’ve seen the gif.) SO FAR, the computer still hasn’t shut down and has been running non-stop for around six hours. In just a bit I’ll load up Opera (it’s still installed on that PC, specifically because it does ONE thing better than Firefox) and start trying to browse the internet. If that works for an hour…I’ll try playing a video. I’ll update when I reach that point.
Oh, and you’re getting this instead of the Lara Croft Go post because A) broken computer has been on my mind all day; and B) the Lara Croft article is on the computer that’s “crashed” and I don’t want to introduce extraneous processes while I’m troubleshooting. So this is the update *for now*.
The Mistakes DOOM Didn't Make
How did this game avoid all the usual stupidity that ruins remakes of classic titles?
The Plot-Driven Door
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
Marvel's Civil War
Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
The Brilliance of Mass Effect
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
I recently had something very similar happen. A bad storm caused a power outage, and when everything came back on I would get a few minutes to a few hours before it would randomly reset. At first it seemed to be due to the video card, because it would reset whenever I would start up certain games but not others. But it started happening more frequently until it became almost impossible to use. Long story short – I tried various fixes but in the end it turned out to be the RAM. Not the module itself, but the slot on the motherboard. Somehow, that particular slot is borked and any RAM put in there will cause a reset after a minute or two. The fix was just to move the RAM stick(s) to a different slot (if you have any free).
Not exactly the same situation, because it was resetting and not just shutting down, but it’s something to look at.
EDIT: Sorry I guess I jumped the gun there, I guess it was your USB hub? Teach me to post without reading the whole thing.
You didn’t jump the gun, really. The “experiment” in letting the computer sit for a while after starting up worked great until I started using the internet. Even before trying to play a video, I could tell while browsing and even while using Discord that response was weirdly sluggish. Enough to see, but the activity I was working on would pause very briefly before executing. Like lag in a game. And then, every time I started playing a video it would fail fairly quickly, but not after exactly the same amount of time. And then sometimes it wouldn’t boot. I was actually able to get the CatchyOS Live USB to start up with my external USB hub turned off. But it did finally shut-down when I tried playing a video on YouTube.
I am concerned the issue is in the video card because of the number of times that was the triggering event, but I have seen enough failures, and the slow response even without playing a video, to indicate the core problem cauld just as easily be another component on the motherboard or the motherboard itself. I did, I think, fairly convincingly prove the external USB hub is not the root of the problem. So it could be the video card, it could be the power supply, it could be the CPU, it could be the RAM, it could be the NVMe, or it could be the motherboard itself.
This computer actually reached me *because* of a power failure. One of my kids had ordered this computer just a few years ago, then it was the victim of a power surge or outage when it was only a few months old. That *seemed* to only affect the video card, as the display would not function and the problem followed the video card. But this is technically the same motherboard, CPU, RAM, NVMe, SATA, and power supply. I will start replacing components in order of least likely to most likely; cross-referenced against “fixing the largest number of possibilities at a time.” I have a new motherboard picked out but not ordered yet. I may look at getting more RAM while I’m at it, since adding more RAM has been the intention from the beginning. If replacing the motherboard doesn’t fix the problem, I can trying replacing the RAM with the new stuff rather than adding it. I think I have a good power supply I can swap in.
Guess my post got ate, but Content Consumer’s reminded me of when I got this computer years ago. No problems at first, but eventually it started crashing for seemingly no reason, turned out it was only happening when a bunch of stuff was open, particularly when it went past a certain memory usage, and turned out it had shipped with a bad RAM stick. The first was fine, but when the load got high enough to start using the second, bam. You can check that without opening the case with a program like MEMTest (capitalization?), then if it detects something swap them around so see if it’s the socket or the stick.
That reminds me of when I ordered this computer many years ago, was working fine from the beginning but then occasionally started blackout crashing for no reason in response to opening various things. Eventually realized it was only happening when I had too many things open, which had taken a while for me to slowly ramp into so I’d never had the problem before: any time it tried to go over X amount of memory. Turns out it had come with a bad RAM stick.
You can test RAM without pulling anything with MEMTest, then if something’s bad swap them around to see if it’s the socket or the stick. Of course, it could still also be the graphics card, since that has its own RAM (as you know, etc).
That kinda reminds me of when my power supply was failing a few years ago; the computer would “randomly” shut off when I started doing anything that caused too much power draw, such as playing games with 3D graphics requiring a lot of video card power (then eventually progressed to playing less demanding games, before I finally realized what was happening*). The part about crashing when you started playing a video made me think of that, though it’s not a direct 1-to-1 parallel.
Given that the computer has already been through one power outage as mentioned above, that (the PSU) might be where I’d start looking first, but best of luck with it! (And if you don’t already have it on a surge protector it probably wouldn’t be the worst $~few_dozen spent…)
*I thought it was some really weird bug in Satisfactory for a while, since that’s the most demanding game I was playing at the time which would trigger the crash.
Yeah, the only thing keeping me from assuming it must be the power supply is that it won’t even boot sometimes. I’ve been too busy to work on things the last couple of days, but I really need to see if the other good power supply I have will work. It’s older, but it was high dollar. I’m pretty sure all the plugs are new enough to be compatible with newer equipment.
Rebuilt the computer with another power supply I had. It’s an older power supply, but had all the proper connections. Computer showed power connected but wouldn’t POST. After reconnecting everything something popped; I’m pretty sure in the power supply. So I’m back at square one. Next step is either moving on to the next part (or parts, considering how often problems like this ARE the power supply, I may replace the motherboard and power supply together.)
Not the magic smoke!
I’m on a UPS now but the computer still doesn’t love when the power goes out.