hardware, my bitch. hardware.

[digitaldiscipline]

maybe someone else can suggest a better solution than "hit it with a big fucking mallet" to "correct" the issues this POS I use at the office is having.

namely, egregious slowdowns when starting IE or Mozilla, and, in the event that the mozilla service needs to be terminated [either by hand or when the machine gets rebooted, which is as infrequently as bloody possible] because this is such a shitbox, the even more aggravating situation of it losing absolutely -all- of the preferences, save for the bookmarks.

grah. i just want to replace this decrepit thing with something arguably non-awful. it's only the main file and print server for the company. really, i'll be happy with swapping out the mobo/cpu/memory for something reasonable and going with competent onboard video rather than slog along with this. . . thing.

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Why is there IE on a server?

[el-diavalo.livejournal.com]

screw that - why is the server doubling as a workstation?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

server = "office file and print server"
not server = teh intarweb site [hosted by the fine folks at sevensages.com for our corporate pages]

this bitchbox runs on quite possibly the gnarliest supermicro dual socket 370 implementation ive ever seen. with dual 733 p3's and a gig of registered pc133, it shouldn't lag, ever, using MSOffice, outlook express, IE, or mozilla. adobe, i can understand a brief slowdown, but when i'm getting image tearing from a corporate logo in a word document, something's seriously amiss.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

So we move the serving functions to a box that deserves it. (P200 should be MORE than enough for this.) Then you can reboot your desktop machine as often as it wants without interrupting anyone else's work.

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

get yourself a copy of Norton Utilities, and run disk doctor, speed disk, and windows repair utilities. Sounds to me like some little something is hosey and the computer is choking on it. As you say, anything with that much power shouldn't be having those problems.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

i have, and it hasn't. :-/

[ivy]

Make sure that the box is only doing what it's meant to be doing, and not being abused by spammers to send spam or something like that? Also, I'd run Ad-aware on it and a recent virus-checker, if you haven't already.

[demented-angel.livejournal.com]

I miss you. I hope to talk to you soon babe. I know nothing about what you need suggestions for but good luck!

[etcet.livejournal.com]

once one of the large outstanding invoices is paid in, i'm going to recommend to the boss that the duties of "file/print server" and "my workstation" be made completely discrete.

the proposed solution will be to move the existing rig, as-is [user apps removed] into some dark corner of the office [ie: further back under my desk] and quietly yank out the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, so it can be a properly mute entity. i'll then either build myself something new, or we'll get another #^$^)* Dell.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I'm (rather) sure it's not being hijacked - all windows patches are installed, IIS is disabled, ad-aware and spybot and norton virus scan are run weekly. I may not be supremely 1337, but i pride myself on being arguably non-stupid. ;-)

"what it's supposed to do":
- handle printing of documents from 3 office computers
- act as main document storage for 4 office computers
- put up with my banging out of word documents and moderate internet surfing and email [via shared dsl]

there's a serious slowdown when starting up "new" programs [for instance, IE6 or, in instances where mozilla 1.5 has been shutdown completely, not just dropped into standby in the systray], and there's a trememdous "system" process load while it does so - upwards of 30% of CPU utilization for up to five minutes. since it's most prevalent with internet-using programs, i may take a while to pore over the network settings and seeing if something has gone wonky in there, but, really, that doesn't account for the senility when it comes to maintaining settings in the "documents" folder. Hmm.

[ivy]

Hm. I actually have no helpful commentary beyond that... that was my one stab at being a clueful Windows admin. [grin] If it were Unix I could probably help you out. Heh. You could install Cygwin and then I might be some use. The only things I've ever seen make a reasonably specced Windows box perform that badly without GPFing all the time are severe spamware/spyware infections/viruses. If that's not it... [makes a helpless face, waves hands about ineffectually]