What happened was that it occurred to me I had a bunch of quite important stuff on the hard drive in the machine I was about to send to the other end of the country, stuff I might need before I got it back, so I tried to remove the hard drive so I could put it in an enclosure and copy what I needed. Only, when I went to do it, I found I couldn't get the drive out. It's super-neatly tucked away and fixed, firmly, with a couple of screws, one of which appears to be accessible only by dismantling the entire case.
That would involve opening the one and only section that has a "Warranty void if opened" sticker, which seemed like it might be a bad idea, seeing as how I was about to return it under warranty. To get around it, there was even a moment when I was contemplating running cables to the drive from one PC while it was still installed in the other and trying to get into the files that way... but then I had an unusual moment of clarity and realised what a fucking stupid idea that would be and didn't do it.
While I was fiddling around in the case, trying to get to the last screw, I removed the PSU, although I didn't disconnect it. I also pulled the connectors out of the hard drive but I'd also done that yesterday and it had no effect on anything then. Those, as far as I know, are the only things I did.
If I was a sensible person, I'd have left it that and gone back to the replacement machine but I'm pathologically incapable of letting things lie in these situations. I can't help thinking "I wonder if..." Since it only meant plugging a couple of cables into the back, I connected the dead PC to the monitor (Via the integrated graphics port since the GPU was already in the other machine.) and powered it up, just to see what would happen.
Well, kinda. At least the monitor received a signal, which is more than I could get it to do in four hours of fiddling with it yesterday.
It didn't exactly log in. It did that thing where it told me there was a problem and it was fixing it. Then it told me it couldn't fix it so it offered me a couple more options to try. I plugged in a keyboard and mouse, connected it back up to the network and after a couple more "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" moments it offered me some more choices, one of which was just to start Windows and see what happened.
So I did. And it worked. Again, only not kinda this time. It actually, properly worked.
I immediately set about changing the video drivers. That was what stopped the replacement PC sending a signal yesterday, right after I updated it to the latest GeForce drivers. I had them down as #1 suspect.
I was in on the integrated graphics, though, and those are Radeon. But as it happens, I've been getting an error message about them every time I log in pretty much since I bought the machine. I assumed it was because I was using an Nvidia GPU and there was some kind of minor conflict but now it was still doing it without the card even being in the case...
So I updated the Radeon drivers and the message went away. How about that? Who'd have thought? Thing must have shipped with the wrong drivers to begin with, although the ones it was using did still work.
Next. I re-installed the GeForce 4060 and went to roll back the drivers to the previous ones that used to work just fine, only the roll-back option was greyed out. So I went to Nvidia's website, picked one from a month ago, before the problems started, and installed that instead. Then I went into Windows Defender and added all the individual Neverness .exe files to the whitelist and the whole folder to the Exception list just to be on the safe side.
Finally, I logged into the game, just to see what would happen. It's a always a thrill ride around here, I can tell you.
It was a new installation on the external SDD. I uninstalled and reinstalled yesterday, when I was trying to get it to run over there - without success, I might add - and then I played NTE for about twenty minutes.
The final test came when I logged out, of course. That's when the trouble was going to start, if there was any coming.
But this time nothing bad happened. I hung around for a while, waiting. Still nothing. I read a few blogs. Still nothing. Then started this one and I'd been at it a while before it was time for tea. I powered the machine down - another test of sorts - then I came back an hour later and powered it on again.
And it worked. Normally. No halts, error messages or crashes. Here I am now, typing the last couple of paragraphs and everything still seems fine.
I have no clue what got me in. I don't know if any of the changes I've made will mean I can stay. It might be a permanent fix or tomorrow I might be back where I started. I'd be a lot happier if I knew how I managed to get the thing working again But I'll take the win anyway. I was not looking forward to boxing the thing up and sending it off so anything that means I don't have to bother is good with me.
I really hope this is the last time I'll be posting about computer issues, at least for a while. I wouldn't count on it, though. Remember the old superstition about things only work when you give up trying to make things happen and start complaining about it instead?. It used to be a meme in EverQuest back before there were memes, particularly when people were trying to spawn the Ancient Cyclops for the J-Boots quest.
Funny how often it seems to happen that way, isn't it?
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I'm glad to hear that your computer seems to be working again! I highly suggest backing up everything you care about from the internal hard drive immediately--yes, even before your next NTE session. :-) If you do send it in for service there is a significant chance that the hard drive would be reset to the initial image (or you get a replacement).
ReplyDeleteMy guess so far is a power supply issue. Best case is just loose connectors (possibly on the power supply side), or just a transient fault in the supply that was fixed by letting it fully discharge while disconnected from the wall. Unlike an LLM, I'm not very confident in that guess.
I am enjoying all your recent posts and your enthusiasm about NTE, although I wouldn't mind more Everquest 2 content. I am still playing EQ2 a lot, and have level-locked myself to 80 for the past week or so in order to fully experience the Rise of Kunark content. (SO MANY faction grinds!)
I have multiple redundancy in that everything from the last few years up to November 2025 still exists, unchanged, on the old PC and most of what I've done since is on external drives, in the cloud or duplicated on other devices. It's mostly the scans of documents I've had to do recently that I wanted to get and that only so I wouldn't have to scan them again. i still have the hard copies. What I lack is any form of organisation - I have everything backed up but no idea where!
DeleteI'm reasonably sure it was a software issue all along, now I have everything working again. The #1 explanation I found online was an issue with the cheat protection in NTE, which fitted what I was seeing and some of the error codes but also there was obviously an issue with the latest GeForce drivers because the moment I installed those on the other machine, that had very similar problems too.
Once I was able to get in and change all of that, things seemed to go back to normal. I'll keep a close eye on it for a while and any hints of more trouble I'll try and figure out what's at the root of it. I would really like to avoid having to send the machine away unless there's no alternative.
Also, running cables between PCs isn't really a stupid idea. You could use an extra power connection from the good PC (most have extras), and the HDD data cable from the bad PC to connect the drive as a second HDD on your good PC. Presuming that the cables are long enough (might have to cut cable ties) it should work.
ReplyDeleteAlternately, something like a "sata to usb converter" might work with a lot less cable fuss. (I just looked up a few on Amazon and they seem like they could work--basically an enclosure without the enclosing shell.)
Hopefully none of this is necessary for your situation now, but it could be helpful eventually.
I could see how to do it but sod's law would be I'd have gotten something wrong and ended up with two PCs not working. I was going to google it to see if there was a device that would do the job - I knew there'd be something - but I never got that far. I still might get one of those SATA to USB things anyway, just in case it comes in handy one day. Thanks for naming it for me!
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