Archive for the ‘Troubleshooting’ Category

My Unusual Windows Sizing Problem – aka “Restore Down” Problem

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Recently a problem that I had never seen before cropped up on my main Windows XP system. It was affecting Microsoft Word as well as a couple of other programs. When I clicked the X in the upper right corner to close the program it closed the program – no problem. When I clicked the _ to minimize the program it minimized it – no problem. When I clicked the box in between the _ and the X it minimized the program instead of making the window smaller (like it is supposed to) so that I was unable to resize it. This is technically call the “Restore Down” button. I did some google searches for things like “xp restore down equals minimize,” “xp restore equals minimize,” xp minimize maximize restore down,” “xp restore window equals minimize” but didn’t find a solution. It looks like there are some Windows repair programs out there but I didn’t try any of those.

After some trial and error I found the solution. With Word and the other “problem programs” maximized I right-clicked on the taskbar and selected “Cascade Windows.” That put the problem windows in a neat order and the windows were not full size. At that point I was able to size them however I wanted to.

YES!! Problem solved!

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Problems With Computer Fans

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

Over the years I have seen quite a few problems with computer fans.  Not too long ago I was called to look at a user’s Dell Optiplex GX280 who said his fan was really loud.  As soon as I walked in there was no doubt there was a problem since the computer sounded like a jet ready to take off!  The CPU fan on this computer is a variable speed fan and only runs as fast as necessary to keep the CPU cool.  I ran some diagnostics on the fan.  During diagnostics the system tells the fan to run at 3000 RPM and then the fan’s sensor is supposed to report back the speed it is running at.  I discovered that this fan had a bad sensor so it was always reporting that it was running at zero RPM even though it was screaming at full speed.  I ordered a new fan and that took care of the problem.

Later, however, I was called back because it kept giving the error message “Previous fan failure,” which was accurate since there had been a previous fan failure.  I went into the BIOS under “Post Behavior.” I went to “Keyboard Errors” and set it to “Do Not Report” and rebooted the computer.  It came up without reporting the “Previous fan failure” error.  I returned the setting to “Report” and now the fan error is no longer there.  I’d have to say that this was one of the more unique problems with computer fans that I’ve seen.

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My DSL Modem Setup Problem

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

I recently moved into a new house. I made all the necessary arrangements to get ATT SBC Yahoo DSL turned on when I arrived. I had a small problem that delayed the DSL, but soon my Siemens SpeedStream 4100 Ethernet ADSL modem arrived via our friendly FedEx truck. The DSL modem arrived none too soon. If I’d had to endure a few more days of dial-up I might have gone back to watching TV…no, wait, no cable yet either. With modem, patch cables, and Netgear wireless router in hand, now I could begin setting up my network.

I decided not to use the setup CD that came with the modem since I don’t like extra software on my computer and I was going to be using the Netgear router anyway, not just a single computer. I hooked everything up and I was having all kinds of strange problems. (At my old house I had cable internet via Charter Communications and my Netgear router and Linksys cable modem worked fine there.) If I didn’t have the DSL modem plugged into the router I could ping the router, but if they were patched together I couldn’t ping the router. I swapped cables, I tried connecting wirelessly with my Dell laptop, I tried my spare Netgear router, but nothing worked.

I looked again at the bottom of my Siemens DSL modem and read the fine print – Ah Ha, the IP address of the modem was 192.168.0.1, the same as my router – I had an obvious IP conflict. With my Linksys cable modem hooked up to Charter Internet I saw no such problem because the cable modem takes the public IP address, something like 71.9.94.234, and passes that through to the “Internet” or WAN port on the Netgear router.

I wasn’t sure if there was a way to change the IP on the DSL modem so I decided to change the address of my router instead. The default IP for my model of Netgear wireless router is 192.168.1.1 but I had changed it a year ago to 192.168.0.1 since that was the default of my old Netgear RT314 router. Now that I had my wireless router set to 192.168.5.1 I was in business, or so I thought.

Since I hadn’t used my setup CD I hadn’t set up my account with ATT SBC Yahoo. I made a phone call to their tech support and spoke to a very helpful technician. She understood my not wanting to install the software from the setup CD onto my computer and walked me through the steps to get my account set up. After a little while I was online surfing at high speed.

I went to check my e-mail and saw that I had to reconfigure Microsoft Outlook, but that’s a posting for another day.

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