Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republicans do not trust women.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

This blog will pay for itself.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

We still have time to mess this up!

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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62Comments

  8. 8.

    Ted & Hellen

    It’s the porn.

    For god’s sake, man, clean all the porn spam off your hard drive, then download the good stuff to an external and leave it there between…events.

  9. 9.

    Maude

    Is it the operating system or the computer?
    Amazon is your friend. You can always get a desktop and have it delivered. No combination so you should be able to use it.

  10. 10.

    Darkrose

    Last time we ran into that, it was because Mrs. Darkrose’s hard drive was dying. I’d recommend running full diagnostics including all of the various hard drive tests.

  15. 15.

    Eric U.

    @Ohmmade: windows probably doesnt have anything to do with it, most likely the hard drive. Although windows does seem to be willing to sit there and slowly boot when it should tell you that your hard drive is dying.

    There is a linux utility that reads the “smart” data from hard drives and tells you what you already know. I used to have a flash drive set up to boot linux specifically to run that utility. However, when this happens now I usually just get a new hard drive because in my experience it’s best to just get a new hard drive and skip the suffering. A lot of times it’s easier to read one of those drives as a second drive instead of trying to boot off of it.

  19. 19.

    Steve

    the file it’s complaining about is related to disk drives (not going to get to much into it) so this is where you need to start.

    First, put in the Windows 7 disk and launch into start up repair, as this is run off the disk it shouldn’t complain about a hard disk issue unless it’s really bad. If this fails try a system restore.

    Remove any removable storage from it if you have any (something messed up an external drive could do this, and some drives have shoddy Plug aNd Play drivers that could conflict). Try again.

    If not, open up the case and check the internal connectors. If you have a spare cable or a spare SATA port (I’m guessing it’s SATA because if you’re asking what it is you probably don’t have any of the more advanced interfaces). One of these might have gone bad and this is fairly common no matter who made your PC (hp, apple, dell, doesn’t matter all the chipsets and guts come from the same vendor).

    There’s more after this, but I’m willing to bet the Windows disk itself will fix it.

  22. 22.

    IamNoYoda

    Just dealt with a similar situation with a HP laptop, a shitty brand which I never had and will own one. Hate to tell you, but afraid that it is likely that some sector(s) of the hard drive is corrupted/broken. You’d better already have a backup of your files. Data in those bad sectors may not be recoverable or extremely expensive to recover. If still possible, make a backup of everything as soon as you can, have the hard disk checked!

  23. 23.

    Corner Stone

    For some reason, my desktop pc has gone completely tits up

    Just stick the damn thing on the base of Tunch’s unused cat version of Portal and call it a damn day.

  24. 24.

    Corner Stone

    And for the love of sweet beneficent Christ, what will it take for something to go tits up in my house?
    I mean besides $$$. I kind of knew that one already.

  25. 25.

    ranchandsyrup

    @Corner Stone: Guvnor Christicle’s tech support flies the support out in a helicopter near your home, then has armored limos take the support dudes to your house. If they disrupt a kids baseball game, double points.

    But I kid.

  26. 26.

    Keith

    If you’ve got Win7, there’s a performance graph you can look at you pinpoint the timeframe when your machine started going south. Just do a search for “Windows Performance Analyzer” or maybe just “Windows Performance”
    Worst case, you will have a date from which to perform a system restore, but at best you can find out specifically what was added to your system.

  28. 28.

    Steve

    @IamNoYoda:

    That’s not really HPs fault though honestly. There are very few companies that actually make hard drives, and even then most of them make them in the same shitty plants (hence the world wide HDD shortage when Thailand got smacked by a volcano). Like it or not regardless of the brand you buy you’re stuck with intel/amd for cpu and chipset, amd or nvidia for graphics, and HDDs from a small amount of vendors.

    HDDs break, end of story. And everyone (seagate, hitachi, samsung, western digital) has bad batches. HDDs are the most failure prone component in your PC, and there is nothing you can do about it.

    Kinda how when Sony released bad lion battery cells HP, Dell, Apple and Lenovo all had exploding batteries, because they all bought them from Sony because Sony was the only one making them.

    There’s really nothing you can do about this. Short of building your own PC from scratch and knowing the exact parts and brands you put in it and knowing the exact batch, you’re rolling the dice no matter what you buy. Which is one of the reasons I’m anal retentive about what goes in my own computers and always keep a knopix live distro on me.

  29. 29.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @IamNoYoda:

    DriveImage XML, that’s all you need to recover files off of a hard drive. If a customer has a questionable drive the first thing I do is pull the drive, slap it in my main system and back everything off of it with DriveImage XML. There are other CLI tools that I can use for really bad drives but this program does 99% of the heavy lifting.

    Once I back it up I then scan it for viruses, then run non-destructive performance tests on it. If there is still a question I will then run a destructive test to really flog the drive.

    classpnp.sys usually indicates a hardware level problem.

  31. 31.

    max

    The Manatee is correct. Classpnp.sys hanging means the system is requesting that the hardware in the system inform it of what kind of hardware they might be and then it installs/confirms the appropriate drivers. A boot then a hang suggests the hard drive is not likely the issue (although the hard driver adapter might be).

    On the other hand, it is possible to have a virus of some sort.

    The easier way to check all this is 1) fetch the f-prot rescue CD here, 2) disconnect the peripheral hardware (malfunctioning USB device could cause this for example) except the monitor and the keyboard and the DVD drive, 3) and try and boot up with the rescue disk. If the rescue disk takes forever to boot and find the network (and fail), we know you have some kind of internal hardware problem.

    You can reboot with the network connected to do the scan, but it will take forever. At that point I have to stop because I’ve no idea what kind of hardware you have – if you have a common modern desktop PC, then you probably have only one card (the video card), and you could remove that to test if it’s the problem, but there’s a hardware fault in the box somewhere.

    If it boots up OK off the rescue CD, of course, you wanna reboot with the network plugged in and do a scan and find your little friend that’s taken up residence, if there is one.

    max
    [‘Things get a little obscure past this point.’]

  32. 32.

    muddy

    Wasn’t it just recently, John, that you were about to build a whole new system, asked advice, and everyone weighed in with all kinds of details. Then you said you just bought ??? (don’t remember part name) and that solved all, and you didn’t need a whole new computer after all?

    Wasn’t that just a few weeks ago? Christ. Okay, it might have been a couple months, but still…..

  33. 33.

    kenneth tiven

    Perhaps it is time to buy a big IMac and forget all this “under the hood maintenance nonsense.” Once you use a Mac you’ll never go back.

  36. 36.

    James Hare

    Windows 7 has a recovery mode that can repair some errors at boot. You should try running that. There’s a way to launch the command line from that utility — in the command line you should enter this command:
    chkdsk /p /r
    This will check the disk exhaustively and repair bad sectors if possible. If that fails to clear up the issue you may have a problem with your boot drive. A linux livecd will allow you to at least boot the system and copy essential files from your hard drive to a USB disk. After that you can re-install Windows and start from scratch.

  37. 37.

    Bernie

    Hint: after many many years of pc torture, I finally bought a machine that has a bitten fruit on it. And HAPPY I’ve been for over three years! Seriously.

  38. 38.

    guachi

    It’s likely not a Windows problem specifically (despite what the people telling you to buy Apple might be thinking), it’s most likely a hard drive.

    So, basically, it’s what a dozen other folks are telling you it is.

  39. 39.

    Bernie

    @max:

    Sorry, I NEVER have to do any of this crap that you seem to love indulging in. I don’t miss it at all. I have better things to do.

  40. 40.

    cmorenc

    Another vote from hard experience that the most likely culprit is a failing hard drive (probably the C:/ boot drive). Been there, done that, with symptoms similar to what you describe.

  42. 42.

    lojasmo

    @trex:

    Once you go iPad you never go back.

    I actually agree with this. I got an ipad a few years ago, and have no desire to hop on even one of the two macbook pros we have hanging around.

    logitec solar bluetooth keyboard is all i need to make it a nearly flawless solution for daily use.

  43. 43.

    Sayne

    If you have important docs backed up, then just reinstall Windows. Nothing makes a machine run more smoothly than a fresh install of Windows. I reformat and reinstall Windows at least every 2 years, preferably every year.

  44. 44.

    Bago

    @trex: Pfft. I’m trading this busted ass iPad 2 for a surface tomorrow. X86 and USB baybee!

    Also, too, I have had an hp laptop do the same thing when the hd died. In the bios you can do an hd check, and it whines, get a transfer cable and a new hard drive and reliscence your os install.

    Also, if you plan on partitioning your drives, allocate space from right to left if you can, and be wary of offline file caching. It’s the stuff that sits in windows\csc . By default that’s 10% of your disk.

  46. 46.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    For those of you fixated on the HDD being the problem, I just had a system dropped off this afternoon that made the customer think the same thing. Boots, hangs most times, BSOD w/classpnp.sys error and one bank of memory is dead.

    The power supply is shot. 10.9 volts on the 12V rail, 4.1 volts on the 5V rail. Popped in a new PS and it’s running like normal.

    Testing and diagnosing is essential to solving PC problems. Fixating on one item is bound to lead to replacing unnecessary parts. I pulled all unnecessary hardware (minimum PS load @ boot), got it to boot into BIOS and checked the voltages. Tested the RAM after replacing the PS and it all passed just fine.

    Customer is happy.

  47. 47.

    Mork from Ork

    FWIW: I would recommend an Apple product. Personally I LOVE my MacBook Air & have an external monitor.

    If you have to stick with Windows, Many folks say running Windows on Apple hardware is the best combination.

    Lastly, even though you haven’t said what the problem is, I strongly suggest no matter what machine you end up with, switching your primary storage to SSD, they’re much faster and more reliable.

    Also, delete all the porn. *grin*

  48. 48.

    beergoggles

    Pop the Win7 dvd in, boot from it into recovery command prompt. Run SFC /scannow (with a bunch of extra stuff showing what drive the system and source files are in. Type /? for syntax).

    After that you should run a CHKDSK to make sure everything on your drive is marked as it should be and there are no unallocated bad sectors and other funky stuff.

    Also after you get your system restored, learn from it. Go to the MS site and download the AIK. Get ImageX off of it and use it to rip a WIM of your OS and dump it on a USB stick that can boot into WinPE or Litetouch. Hopefully you have a backup process for your data (or you stuck it in the cloud because ur too much of a calamity to do it any other way). This is an easy way to backup your OS and each time your system starts acting cludgy or weird just apply the WIM back onto it. It takes all of a few minutes to capture a WIM onto the USB stick and to re-apply it to your computer while preserving your data.

  49. 49.

    fuckwit

    Obligatory dismissive tech-weenie answer:

    That’s what you get for running Winbloze. Avoid.

    Install Ubuntu Linux if you like techie shit, or get a Mac if you don’t.

    Those are your only options for a non-fucked-up desktop: Mac or Linux.

    Fuck Winblows.

  52. 52.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Mork from Ork:

    A SSD is only good for a small amount of fast loading pron. A standard HDD is good for lots of pron that loads at a slower rate.

    Go for the volume, not the speed.

  55. 55.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @muddy: Yup. He had a video card (one of 2) die, IIRC.

    That goes along with OHM’s suggestion @46 that it might be the power supply. I had an old PC that would hang halfway through the BIOS screen that had a bad PS. Power issues can be hard to diagnose…

    I doubt it’s a software issue (viruses, Winders bit rot, etc.), myself. It sounds like a hardware problem.

    Winders has gotten better about giving error messages if you know where to look:

    Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer

    John: Poke around in there and see if there’s anything that gives you more information about what’s up. Hard drive errors often show up in the Windows Logs -> System

    HTH. Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  56. 56.

    TS

    Check out how many virus check programs are running. They were the ones that took HOURS to run whenever I booted my computer. Off to the web – find all those updates – download, update – do a full system check every other day – 99% chance one of them is the problem.

    Use the microsoft virus program & get rid of the rest – AND – check that McAfee hasn’t snuck in an auto payment trick – we paid one year for a computer that had died because we had no idea McAfee held our credit card like there was a million tomorrows.

  57. 57.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    John, if you wander back in here…

    If you are getting a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), you should be getting a STOP code. For example: STOP 0x0000007F

    followed by some more codes. If you search the error code thrown you will find a link to a Microsoft page that explains the possible reasons for the BSOD.

  58. 58.

    MBunge

    Boy, this sure doesn’t make me worried at all about out glorious, Magnus-Robot-Fighter-esque future of driverless cars.

    Mike

  59. 59.

    cleek

    yep, sounds like a dying HD.

    best way to fix: go buy a new SATA HD. crack open your PC, find the (hopefully) space SATA connector. then use the free version of Acronis TrueImage that Western Digital gives away, and copy the contents of your current disk to the new disk.

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