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Russia Fragment 1: The Tale of Babushka's Computer
I think I'll be posting stuff from the Russia trip in fragments, since there's way too much to try to get down in sequential order and even then I always feel like I'm just reciting a list of Stuff That Happened (We did X. Then we did Y. The trees were beautiful. The wind was cold. They brusquely confiscated the bottle from him.) and I could do that, but I'd rather try to tell stories. In manageable chunks.
That having been said,
Somewhere around the beginning of the second week of our trip, we managed to arrange to visit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gipsieee's Babushka, whom she had stayed with while studying abroad. It was a fun visit, and her Babushka is a Force of Nature who is surprisingly persuasive when it comes to getting me to eat things. At some point after finding out that I worked with computers, she asked whether I might be able to take a look at a problem that hers was having. Having been almost entirely computer-deprived for a week at that point I jumped at the opportunity (but I'm not an addict!)*
So, she showed us to the room where she keeps the computer and we got it turned on and the BIOS came up with a message that the CPU was either experiencing connection problems or had been removed and replaced, and would we please set the clock speed for it to make sure that it didn't melt. I worked out what the clock speed should have been, set it accordingly, saved and rebooted, and Windows came up just fine. Maybe that was all there was to it; the CPU had gotten jiggled a little bit and the BIOS wanted to make sure that it hadn't been replaced with a new one. Nice, quick, clean fix. To test it, I wanted to turn the computer off completely and then bring it back up and make sure the message didn't show up again. It was a bit of an adventure finding the Russian equivalent to "Shutdown" in Cyrillic, but then I remembered that on US systems it says "Shut Down" on the Start menu, so I looked for the matching word, selected it, and hit the equivalent button for "Accept" (being amused that I didn't need Gipsieee to translate for me because the button layout order is apparently that deeply ingrained in my mind). Computer shut down, we left it that way for a little bit, then powered it back up. It came up again just fine. Problem seemed to be solved.
Apparently, however, I was in a rather aspie mood that day because I decided to be extra sure. I shut the computer down again, but this time I put it in the same state that it was in when Babushka brought us to it: I shut off the power strip to which it was connected as well. After waiting a minute or two and chatting I turned everything back on, only to discover that lo and behold we're back in the BIOS being prompted for the CPU speed.
Curiouser and curiouser. At this point, I had strongly begun to suspect that it may have been a problem that up to that point I had only heard about, the sort of thing that gets passed on in stories told in hushed voices by the green glow of a terminal. Too early to say for sure, I decided to test it further. I checked her system's clock: 12:01 AM. I shut it down. I brought it back up. It came up just fine. Check the system clock again: 12:04 AM. I shut it down again, this time turning off the power strip as well, then brought it back up. Once again into the BIOS, set the CPU speed and look at the system time: 12:00 AM, and at this point I was almost certain that I was seeing firsthand the Legendary Glitch known as "Dead Motherboard Battery"**
So, I got a screwdriver from Babushka and opened up the case and took out the battery and Gipsieee and I went to go find a replacement. One small adventure in Russian electronics shopping later***, we were installing the new battery in Babushka's computer. I powered it up, set the CPU and the time, and then powered it back down again. I disconnected it from all power and left it for several minutes (just to be sure). Then I turned everything back on again and it went straight into Windows with the (almost) proper time. I had to fiddle with it to get Daylight Savings to work right, but after that everything was up and running.
Oh, and it further supports my theory that all of these advancements in computing power are being cancelled out by the crap that they're preloading computers with these days. Babushka's computer, which is about seven years old at this point, had very little in the way of Stuff That Starts With Windows, and it came up faster than a couple systems that I know of that are theoretically much more powerful.
She was very happy to have her computer up and running normally again ^_^
[EDIT] BONUS TIDBIT: Gipsieee just reminded me that I'd been telling her a week prior--possibly even during one of the first few days of the trip--about the motherboard battery as a possible failure point and she had been skeptical. Nothing like a good case study to support my claim! ^_^
*Actually, it was more due to the fact that it's been a couple of months since I've done any serious troubleshooting and computer fixing, which is something that some part of me deep down inside really likes doing. It's a form of puzzle solving ^_^
**Every motherboard has a watch-type battery in it to keep track of things like what time it is and a few other little things that live in volatile memory even when the computer is turned off and unplugged; even when your computer is off, it's not completely off if that battery is alive. They go for years, but when they die your computer forgets what time it is every time you turn it off, and other things like whether the CPU has been fiddled with can also get reset depending on your motherboard.
***The first place we tried didn't have anything. The second place didn't either, but someone who looked like they just happened to be hanging out and/or browsing pointed us to another place just down the square. We headed over to it and were waiting to ask to the clerk there when the guy from the second place showed up, went back, and got us the battery we were looking for. Yay for slightly surreal shopping!
That having been said,
Somewhere around the beginning of the second week of our trip, we managed to arrange to visit
gipsieee's Babushka, whom she had stayed with while studying abroad. It was a fun visit, and her Babushka is a Force of Nature who is surprisingly persuasive when it comes to getting me to eat things. At some point after finding out that I worked with computers, she asked whether I might be able to take a look at a problem that hers was having. Having been almost entirely computer-deprived for a week at that point I jumped at the opportunity (but I'm not an addict!)*So, she showed us to the room where she keeps the computer and we got it turned on and the BIOS came up with a message that the CPU was either experiencing connection problems or had been removed and replaced, and would we please set the clock speed for it to make sure that it didn't melt. I worked out what the clock speed should have been, set it accordingly, saved and rebooted, and Windows came up just fine. Maybe that was all there was to it; the CPU had gotten jiggled a little bit and the BIOS wanted to make sure that it hadn't been replaced with a new one. Nice, quick, clean fix. To test it, I wanted to turn the computer off completely and then bring it back up and make sure the message didn't show up again. It was a bit of an adventure finding the Russian equivalent to "Shutdown" in Cyrillic, but then I remembered that on US systems it says "Shut Down" on the Start menu, so I looked for the matching word, selected it, and hit the equivalent button for "Accept" (being amused that I didn't need Gipsieee to translate for me because the button layout order is apparently that deeply ingrained in my mind). Computer shut down, we left it that way for a little bit, then powered it back up. It came up again just fine. Problem seemed to be solved.
Apparently, however, I was in a rather aspie mood that day because I decided to be extra sure. I shut the computer down again, but this time I put it in the same state that it was in when Babushka brought us to it: I shut off the power strip to which it was connected as well. After waiting a minute or two and chatting I turned everything back on, only to discover that lo and behold we're back in the BIOS being prompted for the CPU speed.
Curiouser and curiouser. At this point, I had strongly begun to suspect that it may have been a problem that up to that point I had only heard about, the sort of thing that gets passed on in stories told in hushed voices by the green glow of a terminal. Too early to say for sure, I decided to test it further. I checked her system's clock: 12:01 AM. I shut it down. I brought it back up. It came up just fine. Check the system clock again: 12:04 AM. I shut it down again, this time turning off the power strip as well, then brought it back up. Once again into the BIOS, set the CPU speed and look at the system time: 12:00 AM, and at this point I was almost certain that I was seeing firsthand the Legendary Glitch known as "Dead Motherboard Battery"**
So, I got a screwdriver from Babushka and opened up the case and took out the battery and Gipsieee and I went to go find a replacement. One small adventure in Russian electronics shopping later***, we were installing the new battery in Babushka's computer. I powered it up, set the CPU and the time, and then powered it back down again. I disconnected it from all power and left it for several minutes (just to be sure). Then I turned everything back on again and it went straight into Windows with the (almost) proper time. I had to fiddle with it to get Daylight Savings to work right, but after that everything was up and running.
Oh, and it further supports my theory that all of these advancements in computing power are being cancelled out by the crap that they're preloading computers with these days. Babushka's computer, which is about seven years old at this point, had very little in the way of Stuff That Starts With Windows, and it came up faster than a couple systems that I know of that are theoretically much more powerful.
She was very happy to have her computer up and running normally again ^_^
[EDIT] BONUS TIDBIT: Gipsieee just reminded me that I'd been telling her a week prior--possibly even during one of the first few days of the trip--about the motherboard battery as a possible failure point and she had been skeptical. Nothing like a good case study to support my claim! ^_^
*Actually, it was more due to the fact that it's been a couple of months since I've done any serious troubleshooting and computer fixing, which is something that some part of me deep down inside really likes doing. It's a form of puzzle solving ^_^
**Every motherboard has a watch-type battery in it to keep track of things like what time it is and a few other little things that live in volatile memory even when the computer is turned off and unplugged; even when your computer is off, it's not completely off if that battery is alive. They go for years, but when they die your computer forgets what time it is every time you turn it off, and other things like whether the CPU has been fiddled with can also get reset depending on your motherboard.
***The first place we tried didn't have anything. The second place didn't either, but someone who looked like they just happened to be hanging out and/or browsing pointed us to another place just down the square. We headed over to it and were waiting to ask to the clerk there when the guy from the second place showed up, went back, and got us the battery we were looking for. Yay for slightly surreal shopping!