Email from a Happy Man
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2003 17:10:25
To: robert@pcwiz
From: wolfgang-haunzwickl@t-online.de
Subject: PC Clinic Saved My Sanity
Hi Robert,
I just wanted to tell you how PC Clinic has helped me recently.
We had upgraded a number of boxes to a standard configuration where all major parts of the systems were the same. Running Winstone showed similar benchmarks for most of these boxes (about 41), but, strangely enough, some were way below the rest (anything between 20 and 36). We searched a while but couldn't find the issue. The customer needed the PCs urgently so we delivered them.
We heard complaints about some boxes being slow but couldn't pin the problem urgently so we delivered them.
We heard complaints about some boxes being slow but couldn't pin the problem down. Until one day a PC came back in the shop. Running any program took anything from split seconds to minutes. Of course it behaved here and I could not find anything. Until I put PC Clinic on it and ran the complete test suite. The Accordian test sounded strange, as if the disk would stop every now and then, think, and then go on again. It still did not tell me much so I went on to the benchmark which I had never used before. And sure enough, the seek times varied between 8 and 50 ms! I connected another disk, 7ms. I took the defective disk out of the chassis, 7ms. Crap! Put it back in, 8 to 50 ms. Now it was clear that I had a problem with the mounting of the disk. I tried every trick with grounding, different cables, etc. etc. To no avail. The disk would not work in the lower part of the chassis. One of those "bang a hole in the wall with your forehead" cases! As the PC had to go back I had no time for further research, I mounted the disk in the upper bay and it worked fine.
Why do I tell you all this? Because without PC Clinic I'd *never* have found that problem! So I'm using the whole suit now on every suspect box that comes my way.
Cheers, Wolf
|