I’m pretty good with computers. I’m usually a bit humble about that kind of thing but in this case it is context for what I’m about to say. You see, I’m frustrated.
I always have a handful of projects on the go. Nothing too stressful. Usually me just tweaking something, modding something or playing with technology I find interesting or think might be useful. Right now though I’m hitting a few walls and can’t find the time or motivation to fix them. The list is short but worth recording:
– My Media Centre keeps waking up at 14:30 every day. Nothing in the powercfg lastwake points to a culprit. I’ve combed through task scheduler and the logs give me no clue. No hardware is set to switch it on. No WOL or BIOS settings. But something is doing it. This post gives some pointers but nothing has helped so far.
– Company of Heroes will not save. There is a known bug when your My Documents folder is on a network share as mine is. But the fix doesn’t work for me. Annoying as it means I have to finish each level in one sitting and hope I don’t make dumb-ass mistakes midway through. [SOLUTION] Contacted forum admin and asked him to correct the bug-fix instructions. Works now but still very slow. 5 minutes to save is better than no save so I’ll put up with it.
– My Thecus N299 keeps locking up. I have the cover off it in case it was heat-related but it tends to only happen when I’m watching a DVD on my Media Centre that was saved to the Thecus. When I try and replicate it, I cannot. But get comfy, sit in front of the TV and hope to watch a movie and it pretty much fails. Tonight it ran two movies flawlessly back to back though. I’m suspecting the CPU is having a fit and have ordered a chipset heatsink which I’ll stick to the little onboard CPU as it won’t hurt. Next step after that is a bigger fan via a dremel-inspired case mod. After that it is a trip to PC World/ebay to get a different NAS. I’d rather spend my money on something more interesting though. [SOLUTION] It turns out that my mail server running Mercury was pounding the NAS. I know this because when I took all the Mercury queues off of the NAS and put them local on the mail server and ran another DVD off of the Thecus, the CPU drops by about 30-50%. Seems fine now. I’m going to fit a heatsink to the processor in the Thecus and mount a thermometer in there too. Possibly unnecessary but the heatsink is £3 and can only make the CPU a bit happier. Look out for a new posting describing the work…. [SOLUTION part 2] Heatsink fitted. Large hole cut in side of the box. 80mm fan fitted along with temporary temperature display. Pictures to follow.
– My Cisco 7940 currently displays a logo which it nabs from a public webserver. I did this to prove the phone and my config was sound. I have a valid image that works on other phones that I cannot display via my home Apache server. Obviously something wrong with Apache and how it talks to the phone. I have the config from a server that can deliver images but I need to compare it with my home server and rest the phone after each change to see what is wrong. Time-consuming and boring.
– My home server was due to be replaced with an ESXi server that I built but my webcam is USB and ESXi doesn’t do USB. So do I buy a Belkin usb network hub, ditch my little shedcam or ditch the ESXi idea? I’m not happy with any of those. [SOLUTION] I bought a Belkin USB network hub. Tip for you if you buy one: When searching for it in the manager app, in the Advanced-> broadcast address field, put the IP address you give the unit NOT your broadcast address.
– I am planning to swap my living room TV for an HD one and need to test my video capabilities of the Media Centre – specifically DVI to HDMI. I have a smaller TV I can play with but it means lugging the TV downstairs and disrupting the house. [PART-SOLUTION] All web servers hosted off-site. Scripts running OK but to my old server. Need to be brave and rack-up the ESX server in the shed and retire the old mail server one night this week….
– WinTV recently stopped giving me a view of what comes out of my Sky+ box. This is a result of the box being swapped out. Or was it?
Sounds like a major whinge and it is. At myself. Must try harder…..
