Category Archives: Technology and Society

Administrative, Mathematics, Technology and Society

Computer Problems

35 Comments

Welp, Windows (7) isn’t happy with the computer upgrade. It keeps running start-up repair, but it never boots.

[Update a while later]

It occurred to me that Windows might not have liked the BIOS settings. So I went into it, and found something under “Advanced” that enabled it for Windows 8 (which I was planning to upgrade to, anyway). When I did that, it told me that the graphics card was incompatible with that setting. So I pulled the card, and am running directly off the mother board. But now when I try to boot, it dumps me into an EFI shell…

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, this doesn’t seem to be an unusual problem…

I tried moving the SATA port of the hard drive, but no joy.

[Evening update]

Well, isn’t this wonderful. I now have a computer that wantonly destroys USB drives.

[Update a minute after I typed that]

OK, it didn’t destroy the drive. It just made it take a couple minutes to recognize it. I guess that’s not quite as bad, but it still isn’t bootable.

[Late-evening update]

OK, now seriously, it is wrecking flash drives. That’s the second one today. I copy a bootable ISO to a drive, it doesn’t boot, then no other computer can even see the drive. That’s two. Today.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

No First-Stage Landing Today

20 Comments

The weather at the landing site isn’t acceptable. Look like only chance of demo’ing the landing on this mission is if it gets delayed to February 20th or beyond.

[Update shortly after launch]

All seems to be nominal so far, a few minutes after a beautiful sunset launch.

[Update a couple hours after launch]

SpaceX reports that the rocket came down vertical within ten meters of the virtual target. IOW, the landing probably would have worked if not for sea state.

Administrative, Business, Technology and Society

Computer Upgrade

22 Comments

I just went from a 3.8 MGHz to 4.1 MGHz processor (A10-6800K), and doubled memory, from 8 GB of 1366 to 16 GB of 2133. The difference in performance is amazing. Mostly due to memory, I suspect (the only difference in CPU is the slight percentage increase in speed). Now to go put the old CPU and memory in her machine, which will be an upgrade for her Windows system.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’m sure the fact that the OS is on an SSD doesn’t hurt, either.

[Update late afternoon]

Oh, goody. In order to give her computer the new CPU/memory, I have to change the motherboard out, too, but the HP Pavilion case doesn’t seem to have cables marked. Sigh.