[Fourlanders] today's (8/17) computer update

[Bob Lear]

Good news that now three days of stable operation, 6+ hours each. Today 
will be a longer period as they'll probably get to stay on tonight.

Came out about 11AM and went through each of the 5 computers with Ron's 
check-list of Control Panel changes after turning them on but not 
running WL.  Shut down and restarted each and went back through the list 
to make sure things 'took'.  A few items didn't on a couple of the 
computers, so I changed them again and shut down and restarted.  Now all 
five do have the setting changed per Ron's list, turning off all the 
'sleepy time' possibilities.

Going through and starting WL on each computer.  All but 2m (below) came 
up with my WL Test2 file, would call properly live and recorded and CAT 
and CW.  Have periodically tested them today like yesterday with Q's 
entered, changing ops, calling, making sure no HOT mic occurs, etc.  All 
is well there.

I do still get an error on the server (which has no sound card or audio 
setup attempted) saying 'error setting up sound device names, vista 
style'.  The others all showed this until audio was set up and working 
properly.

What happened on 2m computer:  When it was restarted second time after 
making the Power changes, it came up "unable to start".  It asked 
whether I wanted to Restore or attempt repair.  I chose attempt repair.  
It went in to repair mode I guess and kept showing a progress tracer 
line going over and over in a window saying "attempting to do startup 
repair".  Kept going on, I tried the CANCEL button but it came back and 
said it couldn't cancel this operation.  Eventually it apparently 
finished (about 10 mins) and said "REPAIR cannot repair this computer 
automatically".  It had a finish box and I chose it and the computer 
immediately shut down.  I restarted and everything came up normal and 
I've been testing it with all the others networked since that happened 
about noon time today.  Another WTF?

Ron and I had talked last night and decided that if we continued to have 
problems with these computers we could just use the XP computers since 
we don't have any newer radios that require the latest version of WL to 
use them.   Of course, that is still our backup plan if things go sour 
with the new computers but three days positive results with nightly 
shutdowns is finally starting to be encouraging.  We aren't planning to 
take the XP computers to the mountain for backup and will make a final 
decision in the next couple of weeks after we continue testing.  None 
this weekend because of the hamfest and eclipse, but next week I'll be 
back on them again.

73, Bob