[kde-linux] Accident loses sound

[david]

Kevin Krammer wrote:

> Potentially there are five levels of restart:
> - stopping application and restarting it
> - stopping session (logout) and restarting it (login)
> - switching to a lower runlevel (partial system shutdown) and switching back
> - stopping system and restarting it (reboot)
> - stopping the machine and restarting it (sometimes even requires a couple of 
> seconds without any power)
> 
> While this makes it look like rebooting (with optional power down) will always 
> work, it is usually better to solve it at early steps in this list.
> Not just for convenience (less to restart) but also because every level down 
> the list removes options to interact with the system, e.g. in runlevel 1 you 
> don't have X11 anymore, maybe not even networking, but still the basic shell 
> tools and capability to backup data, etc.

I worked at a place that used Dell computers and Windows XP. We had some 
machines that would sometimes start up real slow, with near constant 
disk activity and a growing swap file. Even shutting down and letting 
them sit a bit wouldn't help. The only thing that helped was to unplug 
the system from the power and let it sit. Two of the technicians there 
decided that something in the machines' hardware was keeping the 
contents of the memory alive when shutdown, so that when Windows went to 
start up, it found the memory already in use and proceeded to swap it 
out to make room for itself.

This didn't effect all the Dell machines we had, only a few of them.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes simply shutting down a 
powered PC isn't enough to clear hardware problems?

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community