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Win XP freezes on boats

:: Tuesday, July 20th, 2004 @ 6:02:30 am

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I’ve been struggling with this problem for… well, about a year now. Whenever I have taken my old Dell Inspiration 8600 (which is now in the hands of my sister) or IBM Thinkpad T41p onto a moving boat, the machines lock up periodically — specifically, when I am using Adobe Photoshop CS. I used to think it was a RAM problem, but now I think it’s related to the hard disk and the motion of the boat (or vibration of the engine). The Thinkpad I’m using has some sort of acceleration detection software that stops drive access when it detects anything out of the ordinary, but I have disabled it because it is too damn sensitive.

A friend on the last trip who had an iBook had his machine freeze for small periods of time while we were underway, but it always recovered moments later. There two other Windows machines on board that ran without problems as well. But both my Dell and IBM just freeze, requiring a hard reset. But when I am stationary, I have no problems and the machine is rock-solid. I do have both of the machines set up with the same software packages, and so must conclude that it is some problem with what I have installed and the motion/vibration of the boat/engine. It’s bizarre, and it’s pissing me off. I don’t remember my older notebooks (Sony TR-1 and IBM Thinkpad A31) ever having this problem, but maybe my software configuration differed then.

Anyone have similar experiences? :)

| Palm Beach, Florida | link | trackback | Jul 20, 2004 06:02:30
  • Chester

    Interesting. Never heard of the issue. My guess is, if anything, it’s the rocking/swaying and not the vibration, as the vibration ought to be similar to that of an airplane, no?

  • http://balanceinmotion.net Fred

    If you say the title with a Canadian accent it sounds like you’re saying it freezes on boot. Not so good, eh? Or maybe on boots, which would be weird, but who ever heard of a boottop? Unless you mean the British word for trunk. In which case it would be sort of like the opposite of frying an egg on your car in Death Valley. This message brought to you by the Partnership for More Randomness in Commenting.

  • http://aspragg.blogspot.com AdamS

    “The Thinkpad I’m using has some sort of acceleration detection software that stops drive access when it detects anything out of the ordinary, but I have disabled it because it is too damn sensitive.”

    You’re in an environment with lots of motion, and you’ve turned OFF the safety measures…? Are things better when you turn them back on? What am I missing?

    I’m somewhat surprised that you’d have problems with a laptop on a boat… but then again, I guess any motion against a rapidly spinning disk could conceivably cause problems… Dunno.

    Adam

  • http://www.boydski.com/diving Boydski

    When the IBM Active Protection system is enabled, it protects your HDD when the shock sensor inside your ThinkPad computer detects a situation that could potentially damage the HDD. The protection system stops your HDD by moving the read/write heads of the HDD to areas that do not contain data, and may also stop spinning the disks of the HDD. The HDD is less vulnerable to damage when it is not in operation. The protection system turns the HDD on again once the shock sensor detects a stable environment (minimal change in system tilt, vibration, or shock). When the protection system detects system motion and stops your HDD.

    There is a check box for temporarily ignoring repetitive, low level shocks
    Select this option to avoid frequent stops of the HDD when you use the computer in an environment where the shock sensor detects repetitive, low-level shocks, such as those experienced when riding on a train or airplane.

    You might want to turn the software back on with the “ignore” box check. It will then let you know that it is parking the drive heads.

  • Eric cheng

    Adam – other machines run fine without the special “protection” feature. It’s IBM-specific. When you turn it on in real-world environments, the HD stops ALL THE TIME. In my opinion, it doesn’t work well, and other peopel I know with IBM machines turn it off as well. But I guess I should give it another try.

    Boats have engines, generators, compressors, etc. It’s not just the gentle rocking motion that land lubbers think about when they imagine a boat. :)

  • http://www.digideep.com Andi

    Interesting! We had a hard drive crash during our liveaboard trip in the Red Sea. The notebook was an old DELL Inspiron 8000. I now consider this different and think about engine vibration as one possible source of hard disk failure…

  • Eric Cheng

    Darren lost his hard disk while we were out on the Sky Dancer in the Galapagos, but his machine was really, really old.

    Yeah. I have no idea. All I know is that the last two machines I’ve had have both had frequent lockups while at sea. I don’t have any problems when I’m stationary.

  • http://www.shaxted.co.uk/giles Giles

    I have only a few times been in this situation, but I am writing as I dont think it is a boat thing. Firstly what came to my mind was all the people on live aboards. But when I read the comments I realised here in Grand Cayman we have people who go to stingray city all the time taking photos of people with the stingrays. Now some of them use TV’s with a connection to the camera, but others use laptops to show the photos to the customers, and hence sell them and also burn a DVD or CD for them to take away with them there and then. They as far as I know never have a problem, but I will ask about it next time I bump into one of them, I would rule that idea out and maybe look at how photoshop runs on the laptop, I did just read somewhere about someone having trouble running photoshop on their laptop I think it may have been on cheating dome, but not sure.

  • http://aspragg.blogspot.com Adman

    Is there a way you can suspend your laptop, like on a tiny little hammock or something?

  • Eric Cheng

    Giles – yeah, I’m not sure what’s up. Photoshop CS definitely has a problem, though. I’ve also had Powerpoint freeze up, but I think that was due to a period in time when I was using defective RAM.

    Argh. Maybe Photoshop craps out when it tries to write to temp space and the hard disk is trying to recover from shock?

  • Dave P

    Strange as I’d think airplane vibration would cause the same problem. Perhaps setting the laptop on a towel folded over a number of times would provide either insulation or a sufficient change in the frequency of the vibration to avoid the problem. Worth testing.

  • echeng

    You know, now that I think about this more, it probably can’t be disk/vibration-related. Many times Photoshop isn’t even “thinking” when it freezes, as I had it freeze once when I was using the mark tool.

    Another thing that my machines have in common are the sticks of RAM. Both of them pass memory tests, but I’m still not convinced that they are 100% perfect. NEed to test more!!!
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