Bruce F. Webster

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was recently on a business trip where my HP laptop was largely unusable with the hotel’s internet system. Whether I was using wired or wireless connections, I was getting multiple blue screens of death (BSODs). So I dug out my Sprint U301 mobile broadband device (a 3G/4G USB dongle). However, I had done a factory restore of the laptop back in December and had not used the U301 since then, so the corresponding Sprint SmartView software (with the U301 drivers) was not installed, and my CD with that software was a few thousand miles away.

No problem: I got on the ‘net via the hotel long enough to download the latest and greatest SSV package (version 2.50.0094) from the Sprint support site, installed it, and…could not get my U301 to initialize and connect. The device, when plugged in, appeared to install itself with the requisite drivers, but when I launched SSV to connect to Sprint, SSV would see the device, try to initialize and connect, but never succeed. I did all the usual things (uninstall SSV, uninstall the 301 while deleting the drivers, do a clean reinstall of everything, etc.), but nothing worked.

As it turned out, Sprint had a repair center just four blocks where I was staying. Since I was paying the small monthly fee for equipment protection, I just dropped the U301 off, giving an explanation of my problems. Next day, I get a call: your device works just fine. I swing by the Sprint store, pick up the U301, and later in my hotel room try another clean installation. No luck.

Now, I had purchased the U301 in the spring of 2010, while doing extended work at a customer site back East; it had installed and worked just fine out of the box — same laptop, same OS (less whatever Win7 updates had come out), same system utilities. But I noticed that the SSV software I downloaded was dated 1/13/2011, so it was definitely not the same version I had originally installed.

So, on a hunch, I started searching the ‘net for older versions of the SSV software installation package. I found one: version 2.40xx (vs. 2.50xx on the Sprint site). I removed the 2.50 SSV software and the U301 (with its driver), installed the 2.40 SSV software, and plugged the U301 into my laptop.

Everything installed and ran just fine. It continued to run just fine when the 2.40 software upgraded itself to the 2.50 software.

Now, in light of my simultaneous problems with my Gateway box and the subsequent solution I found, I suspect there might have been another solution. But I’ll talk about that in my next post.  ..bruce..

Well, first, apologies to all you who have been waiting for me to resume posting here. Your wait is over; I will be a bit more frequent in the future.

Second, I have chronicled here my problems with two HP systems — a desktop and a laptop — that I each purchased new, with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) pre-installed (and in each case upgraded to Win7Pro).  With both systems, I have had chronic problems with blue screens of death (BSODs), particularly when using a wireless connection, though sometimes even when being used with a wired connection. As I wrote last June, what was most telling was my acquisition of a third Win7HP system (also upgraded to Win7Pro 64-bit), a Gateway desktop system. Unlike the two HP systems, where I had lots of BSODs (sometimes a few dozen in a single day), I had never had a BSOD on the Gateway system. The HP BSOD problems would come and go in waves, but they have nevertheless persisted on the two HP systems. I did do a ‘factory restore’ on the laptop at Christmas (as I mentioned I might last June), but that didn’t cure the BSOD problem. As a result, I have been seriously considering buying a new (non-HP) laptop, and ultimately replacing my HP desktop as well. In the meantime, the Gateway kept chugging along flawlessly.

Until a few weeks ago. You see, I took the Gateway system with me out of town on a business trip because I needed to be able to use certain files and applications that were stored on it. The client site didn’t have a wired LAN connection for me, but they did have a wireless access point I could use. So I went out and purchased a wireless USB adapter for the Gateway, got it working after a bit (that’s another story), and then promptly got my first-ever BSOD on the Gateway. And then another. And then another. Like my prior BSODs on the HP systems, I’d get BSODs without even being logged into an account. In the meantime, back at my hotel, I was getting multiple BSODs on my HP laptop whether I was connected wired or wirelessly. I had to switch to my Sprint 3G/4G wireless dongle (yet another story) to avoid those problems.

This forced me to look around a bit more on the net for those with similar problems. I found them: several forums where people described the same symptoms. What was the common theme? Having Zone Alarm Security Suite installed, which I have used for years, and which I had installed on all three machines.

Facepalm.

So I removed Zone Alarm from all three system, replacing it with Microsoft Security Essentials. In the ten (10) days since doing that, I haven’t had a single BSOD on any system, even though I was averaging a bit more than 1 BSOD/day on my laptop alone (47 from January 3rd to February 4th).

I leave you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions.  ..bruce..

[UPDATE:  Read this post, which seems to be having trouble actually appearing here on the blog.]

Since last November, I have bought three new, out-of-the-box systems preinstalled with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit  (and upgraded to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit at the end of May):

• an HP Pavilion e9237c desktop (quad-core 64-bit  processor, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB hard drive) [purchased early November 2009]
• an HP Pavilion dv7 laptop (dual-core 64-bit processor, 6 GB RAM, 600 GB hard drive) [purchased early March 2010]
• a Gateway SX2802 desktop (quad-core 64-bit processor, 4 GB RAM, 750 GB hard drive) [purchased mid-April 2010]

As I’ve written previously here, I’ve had on-going problems with ‘blue screes of death’ (BSODs) with the HP desktop system, which may or may not be tied to the graphics system. The c:\windows\minidump folder only keeps the last 50 BSOD dumps; a quick review shows that I’ve had 50 BSODs since January 20th of this year. However, given the fact that I was on the road for most of the period from late March through early July, and so not using my desktop very much, that number may be artificially low. For example, I have been home continuously since July 6th; in that time, I have had eleven (11) BSODs.

What I haven’t written about here are the extreme BSOD problems I’ve been having with the HP laptop since buying it earlier this year (early March). I have had literally hundreds of BSODs in that time and would have had more if I had not discovered at least one major factor: a wireless connection. If I have the wireless adapter enabled, not only do I get frequent BSODs while trying to work, I will get BSODs when the computer simply has the login screen up.

Case in point: ten days ago, on July 11th, I had my laptop powered up and the wireless adapter enabled.  My laptop then experienced twenty-seven (27) BSODs from 8:27 am to 2:54 pm, almost all of which happened without me being at the computer or even being logged in (from the windows\minidump directory):

[date]               [time]         [file size]  [file name]

07/11/2010 08:27 AM 296,376 071110-20638-01.dmp

07/11/2010 08:33 AM 296,376 071110-18408-01.dmp

07/11/2010 08:54 AM 296,376 071110-17877-01.dmp

07/11/2010 09:00 AM 296,376 071110-17908-01.dmp

07/11/2010 09:09 AM 296,376 071110-17737-01.dmp

07/11/2010 09:19 AM 296,376 071110-16832-01.dmp

07/11/2010 09:21 AM 296,376 071110-17066-01.dmp

07/11/2010 09:42 AM 296,376 071110-18501-01.dmp

07/11/2010 09:51 AM 296,376 071110-16317-01.dmp

07/11/2010 09:54 AM 296,376 071110-16208-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:09 AM 296,376 071110-16848-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:12 AM 296,376 071110-16489-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:21 AM 296,376 071110-16333-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:24 AM 296,376 071110-17144-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:30 AM 296,376 071110-16692-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:36 AM 296,376 071110-17019-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:45 AM 296,376 071110-16551-01.dmp

07/11/2010 10:54 AM 296,376 071110-16442-01.dmp

07/11/2010 11:00 AM 296,376 071110-16863-02.dmp

07/11/2010 11:24 AM 296,376 071110-17035-02.dmp

07/11/2010 12:42 PM 296,376 071110-17004-01.dmp

07/11/2010 12:45 PM 296,376 071110-18408-02.dmp

07/11/2010 12:58 PM 296,376 071110-17565-01.dmp

07/11/2010 01:00 PM 296,376 071110-17877-02.dmp

07/11/2010 01:09 PM 296,376 071110-17596-01.dmp

07/11/2010 02:48 PM 296,376 071110-18002-01.dmp

07/11/2010 02:54 PM 296,376 071110-16957-01.dmp

[UPDATE] I ran the WhoCrashed app on the latest 50 crashes on my laptop; it reported that it could only analyze 40 out of the 50. But those forty were, as far as I could tell, identical except for the ‘Bugcheck Code’ line; for example:

On Sun 7/11/2010 3:21:44 PM your computer crashed
This was likely caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe
Bugcheck code: 0x7F (0×8, 0×80050033, 0x6F8, 0xFFFFF80003299E58)
Error: UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP
Dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump71110-17066-01.dmp
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect, possibly the culprit is in another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.

[END UPDATE]

I do experience occasional BSODs on the laptop when I have the wireless adapter turned off and the laptop hooked up via an ethernet cable to a network, but they are much less frequent. But here’s the really interesting part. Because of my heavy travels, I bought a Sprint ‘net dongle (model U301) and the accompanying Sprint data service plan. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve had a single BSOD when connected to the Sprint network via the Sprint dongle.

In all this, my presumption has been that the problem has been with Microsoft, and it may still be. But back in mid-April, while home for a few days, I bought the Gateway desktop system because I needed a separate system that I could pull off the network to do some significant hard disk decryption and encryption (typically running 5-6 days straight each time). So the system has been powered up and running since mid-April, and has had during that time two 6-day periods of round-the-clock CPU- and I/O-intensive processing. (It is, in fact, the system I am using to write this post.)

Total number of BSODs on the Gateway system since I bought it three months ago: zero (0). Nada. None whatsoever. The c:\windows\minidump folder is empty.

The Gateway system has at least two key differences from the HP systems. First, it has no wireless adapter; the HP desktop has an Atheros 802.11 a/b/g/n Dualband wireless module, while the HP laptop has an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 AGN. Second, the Gateway uses an Intel G45/G43 integrated graphics chipset, while the HP desktop uses an ATI Radeon HD 4650 and the HP laptop uses an NVIDIA GeForce G105M.

The HP desktop is stable “enough” that I have no plans of replacing or returning it at the moment. As for the HP laptop, I am considering doing a clean factory restore  (and, if that fails to work, taking it back in; it’s under extended warranty), but it’s going to be a pain, particularly given all the software (including the Win7Pro upgrade) that I have installed on it.

Note, by the way, that I’ve seen no difference in the BSOD rate on either HP system since upgrading each to Windows 7 Professional at the end of May. Note also that ‘Automatically download and install Windows updates’ is enabled for all three systems, so they are all in sync with the latest Windows upgrades and with each other.

Anyone else had similar problems with newer HP systems running Windows 7?  ..bruce..

The KIN debacle (product canceled after five weeks; reports of actual phones sold range from 8,000 all the way down to 500), followed by Microsoft’s announcement of layoffs, has triggered on-line discussion among Microsoft employees, past and present. Even recognizing the self-selecting and inevitably self-serving nature of those comments, they still reflect serious, serious problems with Microsoft. Most telling is this comment from an ex-Microsoft employee now working at Google:

I’ve joined Google fairly recently after spending nearly a decade at MSFT, and I’m having to unlearn a ton of things I’ve learned at MSFT.

First, I had to unlearn that my opinion doesn’t mean shit. Engineers do, in fact, run Google, and I’m an engineer. A LOT depends on engineers here. Barely anything depends on the management or PMs. The comfortable, asphyxating bureaucracy of Microsoft simply does not exist. It is up to you to define the direction, and execute on it. If you’re good, you will also get other people to execute on it, by means of which you will establish yourself as a leader.

Second, I had to unlearn that my teammates are plotting something behind my back. As far as I can tell a few months in, they aren’t. Or they’re so skilled at it that I don’t see the plot (which after 10 years at MSFT is unlikely). They’re just building a product.

Third, there’s no “jihad” against anyone. Not even Microsoft. People are discouraged from thinking in those terms. No one is trying to “kill the fucking Microsoft”. No one is throwing chairs or calling Ballmer a pussy. People just build their products and services the best they can.

Fourth, there are very few people who can say “no” without motivating their answer with data. The first answer you will hear from anyone (including Legal!) is “yes”. It’s not blind acceptance or anarchy either, it is expected that you will motivate your changes, with data, if necessary. Want to change the way Google runs ads? If your change makes sense and you can demonstrate it, it will be accepted. Search? The same. This one is particularly hard to unlearn – after burying so many great (or at least I thought they were great) ideas because they weren’t _politically_ feasible, sometimes within the same extended team.

And so on and so forth. I wasn’t a bad performer at MS by any means (left the company 5 levels up from where I joined), and as a matter of fact I admire bits and pieces of Microsoft to this day, but Google made me realize just how miserable I was there. I don’t yet feel Google is the ideal place for me either, but one thing is clear – it’s much easier to breathe here, if you know what I mean.

When I wrote The Art of ‘Ware back in 1994, I came away from it with a greater appreciation of why Microsoft had achieved the success that it had. It appears that Microsoft has lost its way. ..bruce..

My dad, John Webster, got involved in electronics nearly 70 years ago. He enlisted in the Navy in 1941 and after surviving both Pearl Harbor and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, he was sent stateside, where he received initial training in radio communications. During his 29 years in the Navy, he worked largely in electronics, finishing up as chief electronics officer aboard the USS Providence (CLG-6) during its last tour in Vietnam, where it was flagship for the US Navy Seventh Fleet, and for a short time after it transferred back to San Diego (Dad retired in 1970).

Most of the electronics that Dad dealt with were old-school: vacuum tubes, custom circuit boards, large and discrete components, and so on. He said that whenever a piece of electronic equipment started acting up, his first course of action — if a quick inspection didn’t reveal a core problem — was to sharply hit the equipment on the top or side. As he explained it, heat and motion tended to loosen connections; a sharp rap would often re-seat those components.

I thought of that tonight when I got a text message from my wife that our dual-band 802.11n router suddenly stopped recognizing her laptop. When I called her, she said that one band wouldn’t accept the household password while the other band (on entering the password) would hang and eventually time out. After talking with her for a minute (we’re about 1,000 miles apart right now), I told her to go power down the router, wait about 30 seconds, power it back up, wait a minute, and then try again.

It worked.

I find it interesting that even as the physical hardware has become smaller, cheaper, more integrated and more reliable, it is our software — the virtual and digital connections — that tend to “come loose” over time. When a piece of digital equipment starts acting funny, how often is our first act — if a first inspection doesn’t reveal a core problem — simply to reboot or power-cycle the equipment? And how often does that, indeed, end up fixing the problem? And it’s not just with home equipment and home systems; I’ve seen the same approach applied to mis-functioning “high-availability” systems in large corporate environments.

This says something, I think, about the fundamental complexity (usually high) and quality (often lower than it should be) of the software, systems, and protocols on which we depend, both personally and professionally. We adapt as individuals and organizations to these systems, rather than having the systems adapt to us. And we all poke along together.  ..bruce..