software issue that turned out to be a hardware issue
I talked about this in the IRC chat last night, felt like sharing my story here as well.
tl;dr software stopped working, all software solutions were attempted, turned out I just needed to replace my CMOS battery.
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So, I'm an audiophile. Gotta have the best speakers/headphones/earbuds and music of the highest bit and sample rate. Over a year ago I discovered some *software that's basically a smart auto-equalizer. Out of nowhere, a few days ago, it stopped working properly. Music would start of playing properly for about a second, followed by a significant lentando, pops in the audio, and for a split second every second, the music would pause entirely. Completely unworkable.
After over a year of using this thing, music without it sounds bland flat and all around dead.
Now, intuitively what the issue would imply is that the buffers are either too small or two few. All things were set to max. I tried uninstalling, removing all traces of it from the registry, deleting the virtual devices as well as deleting their drivers from their home in the windows dir. Nothing. I even tried reinstalling windows. Still nothing. Must be a hardware issue.
Well last night I noticed my system clock was consistently falling out of sync. It was running slowly. I reasoned that the audio software needs to synchronize things and to do so must rely on the system clock. So what can cause a system clock to fall out of sync? One of a few things. Broken system software, not the case unless every one in the world has been silent of this horrendous bug in Windows 7. Malware, unlikely because this happened in a fresh install. CMOS battery is dying. I just so happened to have a spare CMOS bat lying around. So I popped it in, and low and behold, clock is in sync and the audio software works once more. Music is full and alive again. Angels sing. All is right in my little world.
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*http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=135
tl;dr software stopped working, all software solutions were attempted, turned out I just needed to replace my CMOS battery.
-----
So, I'm an audiophile. Gotta have the best speakers/headphones/earbuds and music of the highest bit and sample rate. Over a year ago I discovered some *software that's basically a smart auto-equalizer. Out of nowhere, a few days ago, it stopped working properly. Music would start of playing properly for about a second, followed by a significant lentando, pops in the audio, and for a split second every second, the music would pause entirely. Completely unworkable.
After over a year of using this thing, music without it sounds bland flat and all around dead.
Now, intuitively what the issue would imply is that the buffers are either too small or two few. All things were set to max. I tried uninstalling, removing all traces of it from the registry, deleting the virtual devices as well as deleting their drivers from their home in the windows dir. Nothing. I even tried reinstalling windows. Still nothing. Must be a hardware issue.
Well last night I noticed my system clock was consistently falling out of sync. It was running slowly. I reasoned that the audio software needs to synchronize things and to do so must rely on the system clock. So what can cause a system clock to fall out of sync? One of a few things. Broken system software, not the case unless every one in the world has been silent of this horrendous bug in Windows 7. Malware, unlikely because this happened in a fresh install. CMOS battery is dying. I just so happened to have a spare CMOS bat lying around. So I popped it in, and low and behold, clock is in sync and the audio software works once more. Music is full and alive again. Angels sing. All is right in my little world.
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*http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=135
| How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb Zero. It's a hardware problem. |
I had a similar issue to these
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VMbdhu7EeSA/hqdefault.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qJFuLNVXRHg/hqdefault.jpg
(half screen flickering, some sweet spots)
One time I used an Ubuntu's live CD and notice that the issue disappeared. So I went and changed the color temperature (adjusted the color ramps) and "solved" the problem.
Later had something like http://www.laptoprepair101.com/wp-images/laptop-screen-strange-colors/strange-colors-on-screen-01.jpg
(white was magenta, and black got a green rain)
and then again adjusted the color ramp to make them a near gray instead, and lived happily ever after
(well, until the cooler died)
I had a similar episode while developing. At some point, all calculations started to fail or to give unpredictable results. even simple mathematical operations failed. Rebooted the IDE (VS at the time), it refuses to start, any app refuses to start.
A couple of hardware plug-in plug-out, and...
Turns out I had just burned 2gb of RAM (I had other 2gbs of ram, probably why my pc still worked for a while).
A couple of hardware plug-in plug-out, and...
Turns out I had just burned 2gb of RAM (I had other 2gbs of ram, probably why my pc still worked for a while).
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