I have never seen so many red X’s on an Event Viewer as I have recently on our main production server.  Looks like I’m going to have some fun times ahead.  I bet it’s a failing HDD.

Right now, our main backup solution isn’t able to create a reliable image of the drive.  We’re also having a number of services fail that don’t normally.  This server is utilizing a mirrored drive.

So, I hope it keeps on keeping on until the weekend so that I can take it offline with little impact.

So, I’m showering this morning, (already TMI, I know) and I have this dream of the computer of the future. Like any other bona fide nerd, I’ve always drooled over high powered machines, and I couldn’t help thinking about how far technology has advanced in my lifetime. I remember surfing BBS’ with my 9600 bps modem on my speedy Windows 3.1 machine boasting a 16 MHz Intel 386 processor. Yes, I remember the roomy 100 MB hard drive that we never thought we could fill up and the 4 MB of RAM.

Now, a mere decade later, personal computers are starting out with 2 GB of RAM. According to my math, which is decidedly poor, we have entry level machines today with 51,100% more RAM. So, if our entry level machines in the next decade make the same advances, we’re looking at 1 TB of RAM standard and 1 exabyte hard drives. Friends, let’s toast to the future. I’m salivating right now.

My curiosity though is why our brand spankin’ new machines don’t really feel much faster than before. See, my XP Pro machines work great with 512 MB of RAM. Not so with Vista. Now, if we’ve made so many advances in hardware, why can’t we equally increase the efficiency of our software? I have some sneaking suspicion that the leading software company is in cahoots with some of the leading computer manufacturers to coerce the unsuspecting masses into upgrading their PCs.

So, I’ll divide readers with this post. Half will marvel at how dumb I am and the other half will be astonished by how simple the solution was.

So, I did a RAM upgrade on our sole server back on April 29th. It didn’t work out very well. Sure, nearly everything was great, but SQL Server 2005 wouldn’t connect to databases and had a list of cryptic error messages.

We have a guy on contract that’s been working with networks for a lot longer than I have been. He came in, put 4 characters in one file, and everything works swell. Go figure.

My initial error was Googling the cryptic SQL error messages, rather than searching by what I did… added RAM. So today I searched for Windows Server 2003 4GB RAM, and I came across Microsoft’s KB 283037. I’m curious now if the /PAE switch is a better one for us to use. Right now I’m not going to mess with it though - it’s working a TON better than it was before.

So, this morning was a normal Sunday morning except for one thing. There was a stranger in town, one bad dude, known well in south-east Texas, but here in Central Texas is somewhat unfamiliar. The name’s humidity, and misery is the game.

Well, for our children’s check-in, we are using Shelby and a team of 6 Dymo LabelWriter 400’s. They usually do their jobs quite well, and we rarely have trouble from them other than kids unplugging cables.

Today, the humidity did them in. All 6 printers siezed up and produced odd, and I mean ODD, results. If they printed at all, the names would either be spread across two labels, have three blank labels in between each correct one, or get jammed in the machine. Have any of you had a similar issue? Do the Zebra printers have the same problem or are they better shielded?

So, we were going to be upgrading the RAM on our server this weekend. This is the e-mail that I sent out to staff members before the upgrade was set to happen:

We will be performing a planned upgrade to Caleb1 tomorrow night. This maintenance will begin at 5:35 PM 04/26/2007 and be concluded by 7:35 PM 04/26/2007. During this time, only limited network services will be available. You will not be able to connect to the Internet, e-mail, Shelby, Pro Care, or any of the shared drives.

We don’t anticipate any problems with this procedure, and we have high hopes that it will increase network performance…

Now, I don’t believe in being jinxed or anything, but I do regret saying that we didn’t anticipate any problems. Of course there are going to be problems - there’s always problems on our network.

So, I stuck the RAM in, turned the machine on, and it was sweet. It was so much faster, but there was a casualty. SQL Server 2005 didn’t agree with the RAM upgrade and wouldn’t fully start-up. Not being in the mood or having the luxury of time, I did not re-install the SQL Server. Instead, I pulled out the new RAM, put in the old, and the problem was solved.

So, we’ll tackle the upgrade when we have time to create a true fix.