BW December 2014

12/15: I vacuumed the bundling table that was covered with metal shavings and sawdust. Liana and I took an inventory of some things in the storage closet in 405. I learned how to cut fibers and measure them with the new micrometer.

12/16: I measured some of the fibers in bundle 41, but I noticed traces of the cladding appearing on the fibers, so I stopped until I could consult someone about this problem. I swept lab 405 before leaving.

12/17-12/21: Dr. Jones replaced the hard drive in the computer next to the phone. He showed me that the new drive must be in the master configuration rather than the slave configuration. He instructed me to install Windows 7.

12/22: I installed Windows 7 on the computer next to the phone in lab 403. When I put the installation CD into the DVD drive, a menu of boot options appeared. First I had to enter "1" and later after the computer rebooted it required "2" to complete installation and start running Windows. Another step in the installation was to delete all the partitions on the hard drive because they were not in the NTFS format Windows needed.

I installed several programs on the computer, including antivirus software, Google Chrome, Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, and Java. Not knowing what other programs we needed, I logged off the computer and measured fibers for a while. Later I remembered that the VMware Horizon View Client should be on the computer so that we could use the Skybox. When I came back to the computer, it was off and the power button did not work. I measured more fibers and came back to 403 later. Dr. Jones asked how things were going and I told him the problem. He opened and closed a switch on the rear panel of the computer and it booted up afterwards. I installed the VMware Horizon View Client and he instructed me to install printer drivers. I found a webpage with drivers for the HP Designjet T1100 before going home.

12/23: There were four printer drivers and I did not know which one to use. Two of the drivers were programs and two were files that would enable Windows to control the printer. I downloaded one program and one zipped folder of files for Windows, but when it was time to discover network devices, the printer in 403 did not appear. Then it occurred to me that there might be directions for installing a driver on the wiki. After finding them, I knew I should use the driver files for Windows rather than the driver program. However, when I had followed the instructions to add the printer, it was the wrong size, 24 inches instead of 44. I tried the other driver files for Windows from the HP webpage I found the night before, with the same result. Then I noticed a link on the directions page to a driver for the 44-inch printer. There were only two driver downloads on that page, and I chose the driver files again rather than the program. I had to delete the first two driver folders before the third folder would unzip. I added the printer using the third set of driver files, but it was still identified as a 24-inch printer. I wondered if it would matter that the driver was for a 24-inch printer and began to look at the paper sizes it could use. The biggest size I saw in my exploration of the Adjust print options window was 24" x 36". Returning to the main printer window, I noticed the item Customize your printer. Maybe it could be customized to be 44 inches. In the Customize window under the Advanced tab, I found a New Driver button that opens the Add Printer Driver wizard. This wizard offers a menu of manufacturers and a menu of printers. I chose HP, and there was a 44-inch printer in the printer menu. I selected that one, and our printer changed from 24 inches to 44. Later I noticed that I still had the wrong driver because it was for the T1100 PS, so I added the one for the T1100.

When Dr. Jones came in he said the picture of the printer should look like the one we have, so I deleted the printer from Devices and Printers and went through the process again. This time I downloaded the driver files for the 44-inch printer and added the printer from the control panel as I did at first. I found that I had overlooked the same two menus for the manufacturer and printer in the Add a printer process, and that was why I ended up with a 24-inch printer. But we have the same picture that does not look like the printer we have.

12/29: I put a bad hard drive in a package to be shipped to HGST for warranty replacement. I took one of the hard drives out of the computer in lab 405. To do that, I disconnected the serial ATA and power cables. The other drive was blocked in by the power supply, so I asked Dr. Jones what to do. He removed the second drive by detaching the power supply. That drive was in the upper drive bay above the optical drive. It had a special cradle to hold it in the bay because the bay was too wide for it.

12/30: I took the bad hard drive to the physics department office to be shipped via UPS.

I did more work on the computer. Like the old drive in the upper bay, the replacement drives had a parallel ATA interface. There is only one IDE channel on the motherboard with a single ribbon cable that needs to connect to both the replacement hard drive and the optical drive. At one end of the ribbon cable is a connector that sits in the IDE channel. Twelve inches from that connector is another connector that goes to a drive, and 18 inches from the first connector is the other end of the ribbon cable with another drive connector. Thus the two drive connectors on the ribbon cable are six inches apart. I fixed the PATA connector to the optical drive in the upper drive bay, but the other drive connector would reach only to the top position in the lower drive bay. I wanted to find a way to put the new drive lower in the bay, but there were no other IDE channels and no extensions for the ribbon cable, so I decided to put the drive at the top of the lower bay. However, when I tried to insert the drive, it collided with two expansion cards and a heat sink and would not go into the bay. I removed one of the expansion cards, but the heat sink still kept the drive from going in. The upper bay was also obstructed with cables except where the old drive had been. There I would only have to detach the power supply to put in the new drive.

That is what I did. I retrieved the cradle that had held the old drive and screwed the new drive into it. I detached the power supply and mounted the drive. Then I put the case back together, brought the computer to its table, connected peripheral devices and network cables, and turned it on. It displayed messages that there were no bootable drives or files. I inserted the Windows 7 CD but the problem persisted. I thought the optical drive and the hard drive must not be connected to the IDE channel. The connector at the channel might be loose or the the connectors at the drives might be loose. Another possibility that I thought of was that I had disconnected a cable that enabled the IDE channel to work. I opened the computer case again and continued to work on the computer. I even took out the hard drive and tried to disentangle the cables. I noticed that two pins on the PATA interface were bent, so I replaced that hard drive with another whose pins were in better condition. I made sure the power and data cable connections were secure and reassembled the case.

Then I tried to install Windows again with the same result. I tried the 32-bit Windows in case the CD was not bootable because it was 64-bit, but 32-bit was no better. Then I wondered if I was making a mistake in installing Windows. I looked up the installation directions and found that I was supposed to turn off the computer after inserting the installation disk. When I turned it on again, it booted from the installation disk. There were no more problems from that point on.

12/31: The computer by the phone in lab 403 has been turning off instead of sleeping correctly. I found suggestions online to update the motherboard driver, but I wanted to investigate the computer to discover the cause of the problem. I turned it on, and an error described by Microsoft occurred. I found an explanation of KMS activation that may be helpful.

After restarting to install important updates, the activation error disappeared, and I continued trying to find information about sleep. One of the knowledge base articles describes a computer that is unable to wake using the mouse or keyboard. The mouse on the computer by the phone is allowed to wake the computer. CNet says the motherboard supports ACPI.