31 May, 2016

The heat is on... And a broken portable A.C. unit...

So the Texas summer heat is coming on and it is getting hot, sweaty and miserable in the shop, time to turn on the A.C. except for one major problem...

The A.C. runs for all of about 30 seconds, makes a horrible groaning / plasticky rattling sound and then trips the breaker.

I suspect the bearing on the intake fan motor has had it, the plasticky rattling sound appears to be the fan / housing vibrating due to the bearing.

My A.C. unit id a dual hose Royal Sovereign unit that I have never been all that impressed by the quality of... All in all it has been barely adwquate.

I need to keep going with the massive shop cleanup and get that A.C. unit on the bench and get it torn down. Hopefully I will be able to get the bearing and manage to swap it around without too much hassle.

Mind you, just a few weeks back, something similar happened to the motor on the condenser for the house A.C. unit. I cleared that up with a good flushing of WD-40 to clear out the debris and disperse any water in the bearing, and then a liberal application of Tri Flow.

I've seen countless Youtube videos and blog posts showing people with the same exact problem, and they all swapped the motors. Heck, if you can lube it, or swap the bearing, why replace an otherwise good motor?

But I digress...

To get the shop closer to workable I need to...

#1. Clean out the trunk of the Chevy, and haul the pair of rims that were on it when we bought the car up to my BILs shop. Another brother in law needs wheels for his car and these should fit... And they will get out of my shop.

#2. Clear out the Hardi Panel pieces we had bought to work on the siding. I am going to put them in the back yard closer to where the work is going to happen and just get it done back there...

#3. Reinstall the lower splash shield on the Saturn. I need the plastic push retainers to hold it in.

Once those are done, they are the culprits blocking access to where everything else goes. Get in there, straighten up, and clean up. Put recycles on the curb and vacuum up the rest of the junk.

Temporary cooling is going to have to be by my old method. Open the kitchen door, put the fan in the doorway, and blow cold air from the kitchen into the shop.


07 May, 2016

Still no PowerDirector... Working on it...

Sorry folks, this has been an ugly, unforgiving week at work.

To say that I am having IT issues that are biting me in the backside is a huge understatement. I haven't really had the chance to work on PowerDirector like I should, but here is what I have found...

PowerDirector flogs the GPU,
PowerDirector flogs the CPU.

Every PowerDirector freezes the system, just prior I get an error in my event viewer complaining about the video driver.

Looking the error up, it seems the video driver for Windows 8 that was in the system prior to the upgrade to Windows 10 doesn't like being in Windows 10.

More investigation shows that my only sure fire way to insure I straighten out the video driver, is to do a reset on Windows, and bring it back to a factory fresh state. With the Microsoft driver and not the AMD / ATI Radeon driver.

So my time this weekend is being spent doing backups and getting ready to reset the Windows installation and reload all of my software. Ick...

The Windows 7 desktop is also being backed up, in prep for a reload but that has to do with that stupid coupons.com printer spyware that another household member installed. I don't mind that they want a special app, but spyware? Really?

So for the time being, I am banging out the video using Windows Movie Maker, and it is taking forever to get through because, well I am used to video editing in a much more professional application and I keep hunting for functxions that aren't there...


04 May, 2016

New SSD is awesome. PowerDirector 14 Ultimate is still flaky...

Okay so I discovered the failing spinning disk HDD when I started troubleshooting hard system freezes when doing previews or "produce" functions on CyberLink PowerDirector 14 Ultimate edition. I have several licenses for it, and it works okay, not perfectly, but okay on my wifes laptop,

However her laptop is her laptop and I do NOT want to have to keep borrowing it to do my work.

The problem isn't just a simple application hang that I can use task manager to exit the application and restart, oh no.... it hard freezes the system, no input whatsoever is taken, and even the displayed time on the clock stops incrementing... It hard hangs the system...

I am working with CyberLink to resolve this issue. My laptop is fully patched up to date, the firmware is up to date, and I have run full diagnostics from Lenovo on my laptop and it all shows good other than I am out of warranty. No surprise there, the warranty on these things is shockingly short...

I have made sure I have the latest drivers, and followed all of CyberLink's published work arounds to no avail. In my reading it might be a coding issue. It looks like CyberLink has a problem with ATI / AMD Radeon video which my laptop has.

I am very hopeful that CyberLink can offer a solution to this problem in short order. For now, I will have to swipe my wifes laptop to get my work done, and that's not fair to either of us. The tools I need are on my laptop, and she needs to use the tools on her laptop to do her work as well...

03 May, 2016

Updated and tested the drive.

I ran into some errors running the video editing software and found firmware issues related to the SSD.  I ran full diagnostics on the laptop, updated all the firmware and tested again...

Looking good so far... maybe tonight I can post the video for you folks!

02 May, 2016

The SSD is in and working!

With what little time I had this evening, I slammed the SSD in the laptop, and got the laptop fired up. Works great so far. Reinstalling my video editing software and moving off a bunch of archived junk that needed to be zipped up and stored on my cloud drive... It is amazing how quickly 1TB fills up with garbage files... Anyway it was lighting quick. Installing PowerDirector 14 Ultimate on the spinning disk doing a full install including plugins was about 4 hours work. With the SSD, it went in less than an hour. Not bad. Can't wait to try it out doing editing work!

Anyway, I have the video shot but it is all voiceless, I will need to do some voiceover and video editing before I can give you a quick howto on this thing.... But the process is pretty simple. Mind you, it only applies to the Lenovo Flex 2 15D  It might be relevant to other models, but I know it works with this...

My next repair on this is going to be the digitizer screen and it should be good to go!

01 May, 2016

Fixing a broken laptop.... Migrating flaky HDD to a new SSD.

So in early march, my lovely Lennovo Flex 2 15D quad core 8GB RAM 1TB HDD touch screen laptop decided to follow the power cord as yanked by the dog off of the table and on to the tile floor in the dining room. This managed to bust my digitizer and initially that seemed to be the only damage. I can live with a cracked digitizer and just not use the touch screen, but after a bit I noticed repeated HDD timeout errors.

In order to fix this so I can keep up with my video work, and let my lovely bride have her laptop, I found, and ordered a replacement HDD, I really wanted a SSD though to improve performance and increase reliability. I found a screaming deal on a 1TB Mushkin on Newegg.com and so ordered it up...

Right now as I type, I am using Partition Magic to migrate the OS to the new SSD, we will see if the UEFI will actually boot to it.

It should....

So as soon as I am done with the data copy, I am going to wing the camera back up in here and give you guys and gals a birds eye view of me replacing the HDD with the new SSD and configuring the boot order, and booting for the first time from the new hard drive.

Wish me luck!

Replacing a Belt Tensioner on a 2009 Chevrolet HHR with Mr Red

We visited with Red of Red and DJ in Houston Texas to get the lowdown on how to swap out a defective serpentine belt tensioner on a 2009 Chevrolet HHR. While the lift he uses sure does make things easier, he gives you pointers on how to most effectively and affordably get the job done!