fujitsu mpg3204ah firmware failure
This computer was failing to start properly… OS not found, press any key to continue, or something like that.
When I go to take a look at the PC, it seems to boot correctly, but part-way through booting XP, it displays the BSOD. After a restart, it just shows a disk read error… this is not good 🙁
An internet search reveals that these types of drives (fujitsu mpg and mpf series) have a bad reputation for failure of their firmware (ie electronics failure). eg, take a look at: http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?act=ST&f=4&t=5592
Anyway, it seems like the failure is intermittent at first, but rapidly deteriorates.
So I try to image the drive, but I only image 10GB of the 20GB drive.
After that, the bios can no longer detect the drive (even an hour in the freezer didn’t help).
I call the customer, and she says that she can recover most of her data as she has paper copies, and copies of emails on another PC. So I don’t take the recovery any further (but it would have been interesting to see how much could be recovered… I suspect it would have been quite good, as she was only using about 3 or 4 Gb, so most of her data would have been in the first half of the drive).
Anyway, I replace the drive, install a new DVDRW, reinstall XP and office, then show her how to backup to DVD (so future data loss is minimised).
Hi again,
Just wondered which imaging software you
have settled on,also have you had any reaction or
interest from your customers regarding Vista.
I’m having a hard time justifying building a new system
to run Vista. The reports regarding hardware seem all
over the place, I’ll keep the main windows pc on XP
for now.
Also, see H Norman is now advertising laptops with Vista
and 512MB!.
I have used Vista on a desktop AMD 3100+ and 512 and it was painful.
I expect a laptop with shared graphics will be worse.
Ive used Vista on a new Duo Core laptop with 1gb of ram and it wasnt smooth even then. It had shared video at 256 and aero was disabled during install.
I think it will take a year at least for everyone to even start thinking about upgrading. The hardware specs like you said David are all over the place, and the average user isnt about to upgrade the entire computer just for a newer operating system.
I really don’t know where this will end up, when the latest
windows seems to need 2gb of ram basically for eye
catching effects.
I turn off these effects even in Xp. I want processing
power for tasks,not fading icons. Does this mean
1gb of ram will do me?
It would make sense if all the latest os’s had similar
requirements, but a 2800 sempron,512 and 64 agp
drives all the latest Linux distros fine.
A duo core and 1gb would howl along.
I really should have a Vista box for R&D, but
I am a bit reluctant, Linux performs better on
cheaper hardware and I bet it out-performs it
on the same hardware.
So why put Vista on a machine?
Not to mention the cost of Linux vs Vista.
It won’t help my customers, but it’s getting
ridiculous when my P4,512mb laptop is
left in the dust by MS hardware requirements,
unless I spend money on it,and make sure I detune
Vista as much as possible.
It too always flies with Linux
For imaging, I now use UBCD4WIN… it has a few different imaging solutions. I like selfImage, ImageMaker and DriveImage XML (DI XML is very quick, and selfimage seems to me the most “robust”).
I’ve had one customer ask me if i was queing outside the shops, waiting to get the latest Windows. (certainly NOT!)
I don’t buy into any of the Vista hype.
I’ll do something like what I did with XP: I won’t think about it until I start seeing it in the “wild”.
At this point, only 2 types of people will buy vista:
– The geek who has to have everything (they will never call people like me to fix problems)
– People who buy a new computer, and “happen” to get vista. (and they will most likely call me to connect their broadband modem, or other “trivial” problems).
So I doubt I’ll get many people calling me for vista help during 2007.
I’ll post something when I get my first vista customer… and after that, I’ll seriously consider getting/building a vista PC.
I’ve noticed that linux and windows have their own peculiarities regarding “eye candy”.
Although I’ve been a unix guy (admin) since 1990, and I really like unix/linux, I’ve very little need for a dedicated unix/linux system (a live CD is as far as I get).
I’d like to “defect” to linux, but financial reality (and time constraints) dictates that I stay with the “evil” microsloth empire for the forseeable future 🙁
Yeah, that’s the problem.
If you make your money repairing, it’s probably near
enough 100% MS products and you need to use them
constantly to keep up to date on latest threats,software etc.
I rarely get calls for Macs, never LInux.
I have already done some Vista machines, and
a few locations have changed regarding long
standing windows defaults eg: display settings.
Looks like the customer’s machines will have to be
the test beds!
I just looked at some of my web stats via google analytics:
For the past month, the visit breakdown for windows is:
XP: 3136
2000: 125
98: 56
vista: 35
2003: 26
me: 3
nt: 1
Looks like a while before vista will eclipse XP
Even the IE stats are interesting:
IE6 represents half the IE traffic, and IE7 the other half.
There are lots of people out there who haven’t gone to IE7 yet!