Dell

The Mysterious Shrill Tone After Dell Dimension Lockup

September 24, 2006

Tonight my computer froze. Windows itself was locked up. That, like, almost never happens.

But even more unusually, after several seconds of being locked up, suddenly a shrill tone came out of my Dell Dimension 8400 computer tower. It sounded like a prolonged BIOS beep. I turned off the computer right away. And then decided to turn it back on to see if it would boot successfully.

It booted up just fine, thankfully. I did some online research and I found an article that said the following:

Executives at Creative Technology Ltd. said they believe they’ve isolated the so-called “squeal of death” associated with the company’s Audigy sound cards, and that it’s not tied to the sound card itself.

The “squeal,” which consists of a shrill tone caused by an audio loopback after a PC locks up, has been tied to a specific PCI bridge chip used in at least one motherboard from Soyo Computer Inc. The same squeal has also been tied to a PCI glitch in PCs manufactured by Dell Computer Corp., according to Steve Erickson, vice-president of audio development at Creative Labs, Fremont, Calif.

[...]

Creative has worked to track down the source of the squeal. In one of the cases, Creative found the glitch was tied to the AT123S PCI arbitration chip from Attansic Technology Corp., often used to avoid system conflicts in motherboards with a large number of PCI devices. Under high bus loads, the chip locks up the sound, causing the squeal, Erickson said. The chip has been found on the Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus motherboard, which uses the Via KT266A chipset.

Hmm, that “under high bus loads, the chip locks up the sound, causing the squeal” sounds about right, considering I was “only” exporting an audio file, editing another, and opening Outlook 2003 at the same time, with a bunch of other programs open. Tsk tsk.

One thing though: it sounded like the tone was coming from inside the computer. The article didn’t say whether this squeal came through the speakers or whether it was internal, so unfortunately I don’t know for sure whether this is the problem.

But next time, I’ll think twice before I bog down my computer to that extent!

Dell’s Back-to-School Laptop Giveaway

August 9, 2006

12 Comments

Dell is giving away 12 free laptops every day from July 27 to August 31 as part of their back-to-school 2006 instant win game. Worth a shot, methinks.

After playing a few times, I think I know why they can afford to do this: every time you play, they survey you with a computer-related question or two or three. If a lot of people play, I can imagine this data being quite valuable to them! But personally I don’t really care if Dell knows what types of computer equipment I purchased in the past year; but some people might.

I’ll let you know if I win anything.

Computer Clean-Out and a Hot Hard Drive

July 29, 2006

2 Comments

If there is one place in our house that has the largest civilization of dust bunnies, it would have to be the insides of our computers.

So in anticipation of the “computer spring cleaning that’s not during spring” that my dad and I were going to do this week, my mom had purchased some “compressed air.” However, after finding that it wasn’t “compressed air” but rather a “compressed chemical concoction,” we returned it to Wal-Mart and decided that we would use my dad’s air compressor.

I got everything unplugged from the backs of the computers; my dad got the air compressor ready. I cleaned the dust caked on the back ports and opened the computers. My dad turned on the air compressor and blasted the air in there.

I wasn’t too sure… that air looked powerful enough to really damage something. This wasn’t air coming from a little can of compressed air; this was air coming from the big thing that you use to blow up tires.

The air compressor cleaned it out really good though. As I look out our porch window I still see the exiled dust bunnies on our porch, looking dejected and fluffless.

Anyway, I repluggified the computers, turned them on, and made sure that they booted up okay. Everything looked okey-dokey-dandy, so I went on to do some other non-computer things.

I came back to my computer after some time and noticed the HDD Health alerts on my desktop: hard drive over critical temperature. Uh-oh.

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Blogosphere Trend: Customer Service Comments

July 20, 2006

2 Comments

I’ve noticed something very interesting on this blog, and on others; it’s something I’m calling “customer service blog comments.”

It seems that it’s becoming more and more common for company representatives to post comments on blog posts related to that company or its products. For example, so far on this blog I’ve had comments from FeedBurner, Dell, and Microsoft employees, plus a comment from the CEO of FeedBlitz; the comments were in reply to various blog posts I wrote that were related to those companies.

What I find interesting is that even big companies like Dell are getting on the bandwagon. I think it’s a great idea: don’t make the customers come to you, making them wait on hold or for an email response; instead, go directly to the customers and help them solve their problems with friendly, personalized service. That’s the way to do it.

A Blinking Orange Power Light

June 30, 2006

279 Comments

Yesterday morning I plugged in my computer. I reached for the power button on my Dell Dimension 8400, but then noticed that the tower’s power light was flashing orange. In my Dell manual, I found the section about power light signals and read:

If the power light is blinking amber – The computer is receiving electrical power, but an internal power problem might exist.

Ensure that the voltage selection switch is set to match the AC power at your location (if applicable).

Ensure that the processor power cable is securely connected to the system board (see page 73).

Well, I was sure that the voltage selection switch was in the right place. And I found it highly unlikely that the processor power cable would suddenly unseat itself. Ugh.

Then I had an idea. I flipped off the surge protector and then flipped it back on.

Tada! No more orange lights. Weird.

The moral of the story: try the simple stuff first.

Many visitors have provided additional solution ideas in the comments section below.