Some time ago I’m using a Netbook, because of my constant travels I have decided to try getting rid of my HP Pavilion and do heavy work on the office machine. My back enjoys it, my eyes not always.
Programms:
For the GB of RAM it has; now for me it’s enough with lightweight applications I didn’t installed on it what I don’t occupy but indeed my needs and above all without hacking:
- For Office: Office 2007 Enterprise
- For CAD: I installed Microstation Geographics V8
- For GIS: I installed Manifold GIS 7x
- For Internet: Chrome, Yahoo Messenger and Google Earth
- For Blogging: Windows Live Writer, incredible
- For Security: Avira free version
- In addition, it brings Windows Basic accessories.
It’s amazing this little machine if you look without heavy tools few would have recommended it, but to be honest, it works well for training, travel and blogging…
until today…
It turns out that in the need of connecting the total station to download data, after suffering headache with Prolink somebody recommended me a very practical tool called Sokkia IO Utility and because this confuse the ports I finished making an unknown disaster.
The problem
Applications rose almost 100% of cpu load, and considering that these hard drives aren’t high-performance it became half slow, I could check it in the task pane. I noticed the crisis when I started listening music, and audio got stuck as if Alex Ubago had a chicken in his throat.
Posible solutions
As the internet connection was a calamity I began to make several attempts, including changing the paged memory, close unnecessary services, change the msconfig startup tasks. And nothing, Windows help said that there was a process running which could be a virus that killed the memory for background applications; I discarded this because I particularly trust more in Avira than Nod32.
The output
Well, the output is in the community, I spent 15 minutes in connecting to the Internet and 15 seconds to find the answer. Although I was lucky because my search went to memory, there are thousands of tips that speak of audio, drivers, codecs and more. But the problem is about memory, it seems that Windows, this shit, gets crazy on netbooks, when ports get disrupt and how it starts looking for an optical driver, the fact it doesn’t have it gets it more complicated.
It is a problem of DMA (direct memory access) that is typical in any current processor that makes data transfer without running a load on the CPU. It was just what I did to get the total station data but because of being grasping ports caused they were diving and finally the machine shook.
Total, nunca sabré porqué, pero lo resolví finalmente construyendo un script que resetea el estatus DMA de todos los drivers, y luego de reiniciar la máquina Windows los vuelve a detectar como si fuera por primera vez. Está en el foro Acerspireone.com, se copia el texto en un bloc de notas y se nombra RESETDMA.VBS, al ejecutarlo levanta este mensaje y tras reiniciar la máquina vuelve a la normalidad.
Total, I will never know why, but finally I solved it building a script that resets the DMA status of all the drivers, and after rebooting the Windows machine it detects again as if it were for the first time. It is in the Acerspireone.com Forum, the text is copied in a Notepad and is named RESETDMA.VBS, when running it raises this message and after restarting the machine returns to normal.